Andreas I. Dikigoropoulos

Andreas Dikigoropoulos excavated or examined more than 25 Early Christian and Byzantine churches in Cyprus while in the Department of Antiquities from 1948 to 1959¹. A. H. S. Megaw, Director of Antiquities, hired him for the standing medieval monuments, while Vassos Karageorghis was taken on for ancient sites¹. In 1952 the two were in charge of the first campaign of excavation and anastylosis at the gymnasium at Salamis, and later seasons through 1957 were successively in charge^7,12. From 1952 to 1955 he worked with Megaw on the three basilicas at Cape Drepanon near Peyia³. In 1954 he began re-examining the great basilica of St Epiphanios at Salamis, finding the earlier plans inadequate, and he continued there until 1959^6,9. He also made a trial excavation of a basilica at Chtomolia, Yialousa, in 1957 and dug one by the harbour at Kato Paphos in 1959^12,13.

He published the Kharcha hoard of Constans II solidi in 1956¹⁹. "For personal reasons" he left the Department in 1959, worked briefly at Dumbarton Oaks and studied at Oxford under Joan Hussey, receiving his doctorate in 1962 by one account and 1961 by others^1,5. His thesis on Cyprus between Greeks and Saracens is questioned by D. M. Metcalf, who rejects its "condominium centuries" interpretation on the evidence of lead seals⁵. His finds from Constantia in the late 1950s remain mostly unpublished and are in the Cyprus Museum⁵. He died in 2005¹.