Epaminondas Skeparnides

Epaminondas Skeparnides of Trikomo was, according to R. S. Merrillees, the only person in the Karpas and Famagusta region besides George Basil Palma known to have traded in antiquities in the first half of the twentieth century¹. His name is also printed as Skeparkides, Skepanides and Skeparides, and Palma's record has "Skeparindes (sic)". Merrillees adds that he was told Skeparnides was a colleague of Peter Colocassides and a gambler.

His collection was registered with the Cyprus Museum in 1906 as No. 141, and included 16 stone statues of various shapes. In 1934 he gave the museum small objects, mostly seals and ring bezels in lead and stone, with some Classical coins, said to come from Trikomo (CM 1934/II-12/9 to 27). On 30 April 1936 his collection was declared to the Department of Antiquities¹.

In 1937 a larger group of small objects, many of them lead weights, was confiscated from him and deposited in the Cyprus Museum (CM 1937/III-9/1 to 237). Merrillees notes that the provenance given for such pieces is the place of the seller or buyer, not necessarily the findspot. Merrillees gives no reason for the confiscation. In May 1937 Palma is recorded as buying objects from Skeparnides, and Merrillees infers that he was the source of at least some of the Trikomo vases Palma later sold to the Cyprus Museum¹. Nothing is known of him after 1937.