Demetrios Michaelides

He studied at the Courtauld Institute of the University of London, where he took a BA in the History of European Art in 1969, and at the University's Institute of Archaeology, where he took an MA in the Archaeology of the Roman Provinces in 1971 and a PhD in 1981 with a thesis on "The Pavements of Roman Benghazi, Libya"³⁰. In Italy he was a part-time lecturer at the Università per gli Stranieri in Perugia in 1975-77, and at the British School at Rome he was Assistant Director in 1978 and Cultural Adviser and Assistant Librarian in 1981-82; he was a Fellow of the M. Aylwin Cotton Foundation in 1978-79³⁰.

He directed excavations at ancient Berenice (Benghazi) in Libya, at Otranto in southern Italy and at the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome²⁹. His book The Pavements of Berenice appeared in London in 1998 as volume IV of Excavations at Sidi Khrebish (Berenice)³⁰.

In a letter of 13 January 1977 to G. Roger Edwards of the University Museum in Philadelphia, Michaelides wrote that six years earlier he had worked with the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus on the excavation of the building with the Gladiator mosaics at Curium, and had then chosen the mosaics of Curium as the subject of his MA dissertation³¹. In the same letter he described the work as a study of all the mosaics of the ancient city, related to the other mosaic centres of the island and of the Mediterranean³¹.

In January 1985 a letter from Brock University asked Edwards to approve adding Michaelides as second author of the monograph on the Kourion mosaics, pointing to the work in his London MA thesis, and on 4 February Edwards replied to David W. Rupp that the chairman of the Mediterranean Section, Iakovides, agreed, as long as this did not delay the volume³².

Claire Balandier writes that the only excavations in the now filled harbour basin of Nea Paphos were made by Michaelides for the Department of Antiquities in 1981, and quotes an earlier account that he uncovered two stretches of quay, which he dated to the Hellenistic and the late Roman periods³³. The Official Gazette records his appointment on probation to the permanent post of Archaeological Officer in the Department from 8 November 1985³⁴, his promotion, with Pavlos Flourentzos, to Archaeological Officer A' from 15 July 1990³⁵, and his retirement from the public service from 1 September 1992³⁶.

His years in Paphos coincided with a boom in building, and D. J. Symons writes that the Department mounted numerous rescue excavations ahead of building in Kato Paphos and that much of the work was directed by him; they included Roman tombs south of the Tombs of the Kings in 1981 and tombs at Glyky Nero, near the Paphos Beach Hotel and by the Hassandijk stream in 1983^29,37. One of the 1983 tombs held a surgeon's burial with glass unguentaria, bronze and iron instruments, a stone palette and cylindrical bronze boxes³⁷, and his CV lists "A Roman Surgeon's Tomb from Nea Paphos" in the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus for 1984³⁰. Symons counts some 177 tombs excavated in 1984, mainly in the eastern necropolis³⁷.

The yearly chronicle of the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique credits him by name with 38 tombs in Kato Paphos and the district in 1985, only 25 of them in the tourist-development zone of Kato Paphos against hundreds in earlier years³⁸. In 1986 he directed the excavation of 121 tombs, five pits and a well in the Paphos district, all Hellenistic and Roman apart from two Archaic tombs at Mesoyi and Kissonerga³⁹, and in 1988 of 45 tombs, two of them with important fragments of wall painting; in tomb P.M. 3005 most of the decoration could be reconstructed⁴⁰. He spent a good part of 1987 excavating two sites in Kato Paphos that had been proposed for public buildings, the garden behind the Customs House and the storeroom to its south-west⁴¹.

In a discussion printed in 2002 he recalled that in ten years as Archaeological Officer at Paphos he had "no secretary, no draftsperson, no photographer"⁴². In a lecture of 2021 he named Neoptolemos Dimitriou of the Department of Antiquities as his right hand during his years in Paphos⁴³. In the same lecture he said that he and Anne-Marie Guimier-Sorbets had been studying the Paphian tombs for several decades, and he called for a long-term strategic plan on how to protect their extremely fragile paintings⁴³.

From 1984 he also directed the Department's clearing of the Hellenistic walls of Nea Paphos, beginning with the rock-cut wall and its ditch for about 150 m south of the Northwest Gate, where the wall stood to about 7.15 m⁴⁴. The finds included a hoard of 18 bronze coins, perhaps of the time of Augustus, hidden in a niche-like cavity cut into the wall⁴⁴. In 1985 the clearing moved to the ditch north of the gate, where faint traces were found of a road that probably led to the Tombs of the Kings, and it went on throughout 1986^38,39. Balandier dedicates her own observations to him, writing that they depended on his clearing of the base of the western rampart and its ditch in the 1980s³³.

His books of these years include Cypriot Mosaics, published by the Department in 1987 with a revised edition in 1992, and, with W. A. Daszewski, a Guide to the Paphos Mosaics (1988) and Mosaic Floors in Cyprus (Ravenna, 1988)³⁰. He also wrote chapters for Vassos Karageorghis's Tombs at Palaepaphos (1990) and, on the Roman period, for the revised Footprints in Cyprus (1990), edited by Sir David Hunt³⁰.

In his own account of the house, men of the Royal Air Force digging an air-raid shelter in 1942 uncovered a mosaic of Hercules and the Lion, and some twenty years later Kyriakos Nicolaou located it again after several trials but did not attempt the systematic excavation of the site, which Michaelides himself began in 1982⁴⁵. The first campaign, a short one from 27 September to 15 October 1982, was at Maloutena in Kato Paphos, a few metres west of the House of Theseus, and the building was at first called the House of Heracles after the hero in one of its two mosaic panels⁴⁶. He describes the campaigns as lasting one to two months a year; by 1991 they had exposed about 32 by 42 m of the house⁴⁵.

The Orpheus mosaic was first located in the 1984 season; after a small area had been cleared it was reburied until there were resources for its full excavation in 1985⁴⁷. The Bulletin's report on 1984 called it the most important find of the year, recorded that the house had been renamed the House of Orpheus because of it, and took the two-line inscription above Orpheus to give the name of the mosaicist, calling it the first signed mosaic found on Cyprus⁴⁴. Michaelides read the inscription differently in 1991: it means "Titus (or Gaius) Pinnius Restitutus made it", he wrote, but there are reasons to believe that the man named was the owner of the house, who commissioned the floor, rather than the mosaicist⁴⁵. He calls the Orpheus panel, 2.82 by 3.40 m without its border, the largest single figural representation so far known on the island⁴⁵.

The house has been dated in two ways: Symons, surveying work of 1981-85, reported that it was Hellenistic in origin and was abandoned towards the middle of the 2nd century AD, probably after earthquake damage³⁷. Michaelides in 1991 dated the house and its mosaics to the late second or early third century AD, the last of a series of structures on the site, and the 2014 report on the terracotta figurines from the house gives the same date for its main phase^30,45. In 1989 he dug beneath the lifted Orpheus mosaic and reached an early Roman building, a mid-Hellenistic floor and an early Hellenistic deposit, one of whose sherds bears a graffito in the Cypriot syllabary⁴⁸.

The 1987 campaign found a room south of the atrium with five pithoi still in their original positions⁴¹, and in 1990 he carried out an eighth campaign, finishing the praefurnium of the bath and the north-east corner⁴⁹. Damage from rain to a mosaic of the four seasons north of the house led the Department to excavate there in 1991, and he worked that year in the House of Orpheus and in this House of the Four Seasons, which also produced a hunting-scene mosaic of 3.80 by 8.35 m⁵⁰.

In 1992 his campaign at the House of Orpheus reached rooms at its south-east end with painted walls bearing graffiti in Latin; in the same report a small excavation on a hill west of the amphitheatre, near the harbour, exposed a building with pools, baths and cisterns and a mosaic of a Triton holding the reins of a galloping hippocamp, possibly public baths, the report suggests⁵¹. The tribute published for the conference in his honour in 2021 lists the Baths of the Triton in Nea Paphos among the excavations he directed²⁹.

The Orpheus mosaic was the subject of a conservation project that the Getty Conservation Institute and the Department of Antiquities ran jointly at Paphos in 1988 and 1989¹⁰. Michaelides records that, as the setting-bed had lost cohesion and the floor was subsiding over an earlier wall, it was decided to lift the mosaic, give it a new support impermeable to the capillary rise of moisture and replace it in situ⁴⁷. In August 1988 Paolo Mora and three conservators inspected the mosaic and planned the lifting with him and with Nicholas Stanley Price, and the trench along the west side of the mosaic was excavated under Michaelides' supervision¹⁰. It was lifted in September and October 1988 and reinstalled in situ on its new support in May and June 1989¹⁰. In the acknowledgements Marta de la Torre credits him, as excavator of the Orpheus mosaic, with archaeological guidance and with ensuring the Department's fullest collaboration in logistics and organisation¹⁰.

At the University he joined Karageorghis, the first director of the Archaeological Research Unit, which had been founded in 1991²⁹. A report of 1994 lists Cypriot mosaic pavements of the Roman and Early Christian eras and the ceramics of Paphos under "Acting Professor Demetrios Michaelides"⁵². When the Department of History and Archaeology was established in 1996 he was elected its first chair, and in 2000 he was promoted to Full Professor²⁹.

With Nolwenn Lécuyer he carried out the archaeological investigation for the multidisciplinary Potamia-Ayios Sozomenos project, which grew out of Gilles Grivaud's research on the abandoned villages of Cyprus and covered the period from the Arab invasions to the end of Ottoman rule; the two presented the project in a paper of 2004⁵³. With Stella Demesticha he published a paper on the excavation of a Late Roman 1 amphora kiln at Paphos, in the acts of a colloquium held at Amman in 1994 that appeared in Beirut in 2001³⁰.

At Ayioi Pente, north of Yeroskipou, Early Christian remains came to light by chance in 2002 during the opening of a new road; at the invitation of the Mayor of Yeroskipou and with a permit from the Department, the University of Cyprus took over the investigation, and he writes that work began in 2003 with a season of 30 to 50 days every summer except that of 2007⁵⁴; the Bulletin reports that the first two campaigns, in 2003 and 2004, were directed by him in close collaboration with the municipality⁵⁵. He reports that robbers of the ossuaries missed gold earrings and some 900 coins, mostly small nummia of base metal, and that a mosaic floor carried verses from Psalm 117 of the Septuagint⁵⁴.

Two different starts are given for his directorship of the Archaeological Research Unit: the 2021 tribute says he was elected to the post in 2006 and held it until he retired in 2014²⁹, and a 2022 speaker note from the Open University of Cyprus gives 1996-2014⁵⁶, while Cyprus Today already calls him director of the Unit in its report of his introductory speech at a conference in 2003⁵⁷. From November 2007 he and Demesticha headed the University's investigation of the Mazotos shipwreck, of the middle of the 4th century BC, which they describe as the first underwater research carried out with the collaboration of exclusively Cypriot institutions⁵⁸. In 2009 Demesticha described the work as under her co-direction with him, as Director of the Archaeological Research Unit⁵⁹.

His return to the House of Orpheus is dated 2010 in one source and 2009 in another: the 2014 report on its terracotta figurines says that after several failed attempts he went back in 2010 with a new project of the Archaeological Research Unit³⁰, while Monika Rekowska, Michaelides, Patrizio Pensabene and Eleonora Gasparini say the work continued from 2009 to 2013, always under his supervision, now on behalf of the University of Cyprus⁶⁰. He was also Principal Investigator of an A. G. Leventis-funded project of the University, "Moulding Expressions of Culture: The Terracotta Figurines from the House of Orpheus, Nea Paphos", with Giorgos Papantoniou and Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou as research associates³⁰. Rekowska and her co-authors put the complex uncovered at about 1,200 square metres with over 60 rooms, and write that a new project funded by the National Science Centre of Poland began in 2018⁶⁰.

With Karageorghis he edited Cyprus and the Sea (1995) and The Development of the Cypriot Economy from the Prehistoric Period to the Present Day (1996), and with Maria Iacovou Cyprus. The Historicity of the Geometric Horizon (1999)³⁰. With Philippe Pergola and Enrico Zanini he edited The Insular System of the Early Byzantine Mediterranean: Archaeology and History (2013)⁶¹. With Guimier-Sorbets he wrote the introduction to the acts of a Paris colloquium of September 2009 on Cyprus in the Hellenistic and imperial periods⁶². In 2000 the magazine Le Scienze quoted his view of the mosaic of the House of Aion: "For me, on the contrary, this is an entirely pagan mosaic"⁶³.

Two start dates are also given for his presidency of the International Committee for the Conservation of Mosaics (ICCM): Roberto Nardi, writing for a conference in his honour in 2021, says that he took over the post from Margaret Alexander in October 1996, at the end of the committee's sixth conference, and held it for six three-year terms²⁹. The 2021 tribute, which calls him the committee's honorary president, and a paper he co-wrote in 2010 also give 1996, while Niki Savvides, reporting the ninth conference, held at Hammamet in Tunisia in 2005, wrote that he had been President since 1999^29,64,65.

He chaired the Hammamet conference, where he was re-elected President for the next triennium and where Martha Demas of the Getty Conservation Institute presented an evaluation of the Orpheus Mosaic Project written with him and others⁶⁵. The sixth conference had met in Nicosia in 1996, and he edited its proceedings, Mosaics make a Site: The Conservation in situ of Mosaics on Archaeological Sites, published in 2003 by the ICCM, the Getty Conservation Institute and ICCROM³⁰.

He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1988²⁹. He was president of the Cyprus State Scholarship Foundation from 2014 to 2018, and in 2015 the President of the Italian Republic made him Grande Ufficiale della Stella d'Italia²⁹. In 2019 he was one of the twelve elected founding members of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, for archaeology^29,56. His CV, printed in 2014, has him on the scientific boards of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae and of the Association Internationale pour l'Etude de la Mosaïque Antique and as Vice-President of the Historical Society of Cyprus; by 2021 he was Vice President of the Association^29,30.

The University's Archaeological Research Unit and Department of History and Archaeology held Convivium, an international conference in his honour, in Nicosia on 26-28 October 2021, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, and announced that the papers would be published as a Festschrift²⁹. Its programme lists papers by Vasiliki Kassianidou on him and the Archaeological Research Unit and by Nardi on his ICCM presidency, and its logo was based on a terracotta figurine of Dionysos from his excavations at the House of Orpheus⁶⁶. Ewdoksia Papuci-Władyka, who met him in Paphos in 1984, dedicated an article to him in 2024 and wrote that its first version had been presented at the symposium in his honour in Nicosia in 2021, but that the materials had not been published until then⁶⁷.