Ernest Hawkins

Ernest J. W. Hawkins restored the apse mosaic of the church of Panayia Kanakaria at Lythrankomi, and the photographs in the book he wrote about it with A. H. S. Megaw later served as evidence when its looted mosaics turned up in the United States. Annemarie Weyl Carr describes him as the restorer of the Hagia Sophia mosaics and one of the Byzantine Institute of America's personnel; he came to Cyprus in 1952 at the invitation of Megaw, then Director of Antiquities, to begin on Kanakaria¹. Megaw's memoir calls him a specialist with much Constantinople experience². His dates of birth and death are not recorded.

He returned in 1954 for the frescoes of the Holy Apostles at Perachorio, finished in 1960, while Kanakaria continued until 1970¹. In 1961 the Institute cleared and repaired the Kanakaria mosaic under Megaw and Hawkins³. In 1965 Department of Antiquities technicians cleaned and consolidated the wall mosaic in the Gymnasium baths at Salamis, and Hawkins began work with David Winfield on the Asinou frescoes, whose third and last campaign was in 1967^5,6. He directed the Dumbarton Oaks work at Ayios Chrysostomos, Koutsovendis, completed in 1969^7,8.

With Megaw he published the Perachorio frescoes in Dumbarton Oaks Papers in 1962¹² and the Kanakaria mosaics and frescoes in 1977¹³. Hofstadter writes that the book's photographs were taken after the restoration of the mid-1960s and mattered at the Chicago trial over the mosaics sold to Peg Goldberg⁹. Carr dates that sale to February 1989¹. Megaw's memoir calls the outcome of the Chicago case bitter-sweet for Megaw and Hawkins².