Elias Markou

Elias Markou, surveyor of the Department of Antiquities, made the plans and sections for excavations at Khirokitia, Sotira and Kition, and is named in printed reports from 1938 to 1983. Leriou and Vavouranakis call him the first officially appointed surveyor of the Department⁷.

He first appears at Khirokitia, where J. S. Last carried out the survey work in two campaigns in 1938 and 1939. Porphyrios Dikaios thanks him as the surveyor "who also previously assisted Mr. Last" and credits him with the survey of the post-war campaigns¹. At Sotira-Teppes, apart from Last's field plan, Dikaios writes that all the surveying and the final drawing of plans, sections and finds were Markou's work². Leriou and Vavouranakis say that he and Symeon Klonaris had both worked with the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, and that at Sinda in 1948 Markou taught Vassos Karageorghis to draw plans⁷.

Karageorghis wrote that Markou gave his collaboration in the field in every season of the Kition excavations from 1959 onwards; the plans and sections in the 1976 Kition are by Markou and Chrysilios Polykarpou³. He was the draughtsman of the Laval University team at Soloi, working with the architect Carlo Steffen⁶. He was among the Department staff who helped Hector Catling in Nicosia with the Kouklia tombs between 1966 and 1968⁵. His last printed attestation is in the 1983 volume on the Palaepaphos-Skales cemetery, where Karageorghis thanks him among the Cyprus Museum draughtsmen⁴. No birth or death dates are recorded.