Eustathios Constantinides

A Nicosia headmaster, Eustathios Constantinides, was the intermediary when a share of the Tamassos finds went to the High Commissioner of Cyprus in 1889, and a British inspector later reported him drunk and suspected of selling Museum objects¹. He was born in Nicosia in 1842 and educated in Athens, according to R. S. Merrillees, though Ohnefalsch-Richter called him "a Greek gentleman educated in Germany". He taught at the Greek School in Nicosia from 1880, became its headmaster and Director of Schools, and went on teaching until 1909. He sat on the Legislative Council from 1883 to 1891, His brother Paschalis lived from 1840 to 1937¹.

The Museum committee

Marangou lists "Eustathios Constantinides" among the elected members of the first committee of the Cyprus Museum in 1882⁹. Merrillees argues that the "Mr. Efstathios" at the first Council meeting on 15 June 1882 was the same man, and that the "Eustathios" credited with about nineteen seals of the Museum's Old Collection was too¹. In 1883 he signed the Greek community's farewell letter to Herbert Kitchener⁸. On 24 March 1894 he proposed inviting Christos Tsountas to catalogue the collection; Max Ohnefalsch-Richter complained on 17 May, and John Linton Myres noted that the committee had not decided the matter¹.

The dates of his curatorship differ between accounts. Merrillees, following Coudounaris, gives Curator of Antiquities from 1889 to 1912¹. The Political Museum says the Museum Committee appointed "Efstathios Konstantinidis" Curator on 28 November 1905 under the new antiquities law⁷.

Collecting, digging and dealing

His own collection held small gold, bronze, stone and terracotta objects, many with recorded find-places and most from Nicosia Ayia Paraskevi¹. Ohnefalsch-Richter cited "Coll. Konstantinides" in Kypros, the Bible and Homer for cylinder seals, scarabs from Lapithos, a Karpass chisel and a votive bronze dolphin⁵. The Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum of 1899 records his gift of five cylinder seals, CM 4503 to 4506 and 4508^1,6. For one Akkadian jasper cylinder he told Peristianes that he had bought it from an Armenian, who had it from Baghdad¹. He published a short article, "Helmets", in The Owl in 1888¹³.

He worked with Ohnefalsch-Richter. Reinach reported that after the Apollo precinct at Limniti was looted in 1886, Ohnefalsch-Richter and "M. Costantinidès, le scholarque" obtained a bronze diadem, and that Constantinides tried to buy back part of the loot in the Nicosia bazaar^1,10. Munro and Tubbs wrote in the Journal of Hellenic Studies that objects later in Berlin came from "Messrs. Constantinides and Richter of Nicosia", who had bought them from villagers¹¹. A Bichrome IV free-field jug from Athienou, bought from its finder, passed from his collection to Ohnefalsch-Richter and then to Leipzig and Berlin⁴. Merrillees reads these transactions as showing that he was "no less mercenary" in disposing of pieces¹.

At Tamassos in 1889, Merrillees describes him as the agent through whom the landowner's share, presumably Archbishop Sophronios's, went to Henry Bulwer¹. Buchholz reads the deal differently, as one in which Constantinides stood in for Ohnefalsch-Richter, and notes that the Bamboulari tomb 5 lion stele went at the division to "Pasquale, Evstathoos Konstantinides and M. O.-Richter"³.

He also dug. Myres recorded that he had cleared the Acheiropoietos chapel at Lambousa before 1894, and he excavated at Idalion in 1908 and at Kythrea in 1909¹.

Farrell's report

In 1909 Wilfrid Jerome Farrell reported that Constantinides had "considerable knowledge of Cyprian antiquities, but usually incapacitated by drunkenness". He kept no accession book and was "on excellent terms with the dealers". Farrell wrote that he was "suspected by the English residents of selling objects from the Museum" and added: "I saw no evidence of this". At Kythrea 23 tombs had been opened, with the records kept on scrap paper and his kinsmen working as labourers¹. Merrillees writes that the elected members were suspected of profiting "though not on certain evidence", and that it is not known whether Constantinides was ever paid¹.

Merrillees notes that the Lambousa treasures left Cyprus in his curatorship, but his name does not appear in accounts of that case¹. He died in 1913 and is reputed to have bequeathed an exceptional collection of cylinder seals to the Cyprus Museum¹.