Athanasios Papageorghiou

Athanasios Papageorghiou directed the Cyprus Department of Antiquities' excavations at Early Christian basilicas from 1962, at Marathovounos, Octomylia, Amathus and Paphos, and in 1989 became its Director. He studied theology at the University of Athens and took coursework with André Grabar at the University of Paris¹. In 1962 the Department hired him to replace Andreas Dikigoropoulos¹. The Department's report for 1963 gives him the title of Curator of Ancient Monuments⁷. His dates of birth and death are not recorded.

The basilicas

His first campaign, in 1962, was at Marathovounos, where the Department uncovered a three-aisled basilica measuring 21 by 14 m^2,6. He published it in the Department's report for 1963¹². In the same year he began clearing the basilica of Ayia Trias at Octomylia, near Yialousa in the Karpass, where villagers searching for a Virgin icon had damaged an annexe. He also led the investigation of a basilica at Shyrvallos, near Ktima⁷. The Department's report for 1963 carries his study of the monastery of Apsinthiotissa, north of Nicosia, where the Department consolidated the buildings^7,13.

From 1964 the main work was at Chrysopolitissa in Kato Paphos, where a large Department excavation under his direction exposed an Early Christian basilica with polychrome mosaics and a Gothic church beside it⁹. In 1966 he continued at Ayia Trias, working on the entrance, propylon and baptistery, and resumed the basilica at Amathus; in 1967 he excavated the basilica of Panayia Limeniotissa by the harbour of Nea Paphos³. In 1971 he completed Ayia Trias and excavated a Gothic church and a five-aisled basilica, Ayia Kyriaki, beside St Paul's pillar at Kato Paphos⁴. Work at the pillar resumed in 1976⁵, and the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique records another campaign there in 1977, directed by him as before⁸. He summarised the island's Early Christian architecture in a chapter of 1985¹⁷.

Byzantine art and the Directorship

The Cyprus and the Balance of Empires volume calls him the island's foremost specialist in Early Christian and Byzantine art¹. He published a volume on the Byzantine art of Cyprus in 1965, a study of the wooden-roofed churches in 1975, and Byzantine Icons of Cyprus, issued in Athens by the Benaki Museum in 1976^1,14,15,16. His entries on Byzantine monuments in the Megali Kypriaki Enkyklopaideia, published in 1985, documented hundreds of monuments¹.

After 1974 he used publications and diplomacy with foreign governments to protect Byzantine art from the black market, and he became a leading expert on damage to Byzantine heritage in the occupied north¹. His Christian Art in the Turkish-Occupied Part of Cyprus appeared in 2010^1,18.

In 1989 he succeeded Vassos Karageorghis as Director of the Department and held the post until his retirement in 1991¹. The Getty Conservation Institute's report on the Orpheus mosaic at Paphos thanks the Department "directed by Vassos Karageorghis and by his successor, Athanasios Papageorghiou"¹⁰.