Evangeline Markou

Markou took her first degree at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1997¹⁸. She then went to the Sorbonne (Paris IV), where she took a Masters in 2000¹⁸. At the international numismatic congress in Madrid in 2003 she was listed as a doctoral student at Paris IV-Sorbonne¹⁹. Her doctorate, awarded by Paris IV in 2006, was titled "Problèmes monétaires chypriotes à l'époque classique : les monnaies d'or"¹⁸. The International Numismatic Commission's survey for 2002-2007 also gives 2006 as the year the thesis was defended²⁰. Sabine Fourrier, reviewing the book that came from it, notes that French is not the author's mother tongue³.

Her European University Cyprus profile lists her posts: research assistant in documentation at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 2004-2005; archaeologist-numismatist at the Numismatic Museum, Athens, in 2005-2007; the National Hellenic Research Foundation from 2009, where she is a senior researcher; and adjunct professor at European University Cyprus from 2022¹⁵. From 2007 to 2010 she was also a researcher in the Paris IV project NOMISMA on the use of coinage in the eastern Mediterranean¹⁸. In 2010 the American Numismatic Society described her as a researcher in the Foundation's Institute for Greek and Roman Antiquity²¹.

In a paper published in 2007, she proposed to study the iconography of the gold coins of Kition, Salamis, Marion and Soloi "in order to analyse Cypriot originality"²². There she gave the torque, "a male ornament par excellence", as one of her grounds for seeing a male bust on the Salaminian gold²². Michel Amandry wrote that she "rightly" proposed a male bust, "perhaps the image of the king"¹³. At Madrid in 2003 she gave a paper on the Cypriot gold coins of the fourth century BC¹⁹. In 2007 she published modern copies of the gold staters of Nikokreon of Salamis in the Revue belge de numismatique¹³. In 2009 she published "Some Cypriot Gold Coins?" in Israel Numismatic Research⁴. The International Numismatic Commission's survey said that Cypriot gold had received "the most advanced research in recent years" from Markou, and that her thesis was eagerly awaited²⁰.

Amandry reported in 2008 that the thesis listed 145 specimens of one gold series, from 37 obverse and 57 reverse dies¹³. It appeared in 2011 as L'or des rois de Chypre, Meletemata 64, Athens: XLIV + 379 pages, 139 text figures and 35 plates³. Its pages 210-219 report 52 analyses of the coins made at the Centre Ernest-Babelon in Orléans⁴.

Fourrier wrote that the book is "nothing less than a synthesis" on Cypriot coinage in the age of the kingdoms and on the island's Classical history³. She noted that no general work on Cypriot numismatics had appeared since the Paris catalogue of Babelon (1893) and the London catalogue of Hill (1904)³. In Fourrier's account Markou shows "definitively" that the coins of king Sa(-) cannot be given to Marion, and she attributes the Nicocles-type issues with the restored legend (E)UA to Evagoras II³. Fourrier called the study "methodical and rigorous", solving many problems, with hypotheses that "often carry conviction"³. Fourrier also regretted the "odd choice" of numbering the chapters continuously from one part to the next, and noted some spelling mistakes, rare incorrect sentences and anglicisms³. On Markou's distinction between a king Timarchos and a priest of the Wanassa of that name, Fourrier asked, "do we know priests of the Wanassa who were not kings of Paphos?"³.

Amandry singled out the book as one of two to highlight for 2008-2015⁴. Antoine Hermary called it "a fundamental study" of the gold coinage of the kings of Cyprus²³. Anne Destrooper-Georgiades reviewed it in the Revue archéologique in 2016, pages 464-467²⁴. The book won the Prix Delepierre in 2012¹⁸. In 2013 the Société française de numismatique announced that she had received the Prix Allier de Hauteroche of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres for it^18,25.

In 2010 Markou lectured at the American Numismatic Society in New York on "The Gold of the Kings of Cyprus"²¹. The Society then said she was working with the University of Edinburgh on a type corpus of Cypriot coinage, and was on the team compiling the Cypriot syllabic inscriptions for Inscriptiones Graecae²¹. In a 2011 paper she argued that foreign coins, though rare in Cypriot hoards, did reach the island but were restruck or overstruck as local coins²⁶. Amandry lists her "Coins" section, pages 141-147, in Vassos Karageorghis's catalogue of the collection of Angelos and Emily Tsirides (Nicosia, 2011)⁴. In a 2012 exhibition essay she noted that the coins do not match the names Herodotus gives to Evelthon's successors at Salamis²⁷.

According to Hermary, since 2013 she has led a Foundation programme on the silver coinage of the kings of Cyprus²³. Amandry names it SilCoinCy, run by Markou under the ARISTEIA II programme⁴. With A. Charalambous and Vasiliki Kassianidou she published in 2014 a pXRF analysis of 48 Classical gold coins, 27 in the Department of Antiquities and 21 in the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation⁸. The method was used because the coins could not be sampled or taken from the museums⁸.

Coinage and History. The Case of Cyprus during the Archaic and Classical Periods (2015), in Greek and English, grew from a lecture she gave at the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation in October 2013, in Hermary's account²³. She describes it as meant to be a revised manual for specialists and the public, above all students²⁸. Hermary called it "a true little manual" and judged its aim "perfectly achieved", while noting that its kingdom-by-kingdom chapter follows an unexplained order and that the passage from Greek to English caused minor errors in some proper names²³. Amandry wrote that it "is destined to become a reference work", nearly 40 years after Kraay's synthesis⁴.

In 2015 she also argued, in a volume for Jacqueline Karageorghis, that not all ornamented female heads on Cypriot coins have been proved to be Aphrodite²⁹. Her 2019 chapter on Salamis asks how Evagoras made "so much noise" around his name while, "if the sources are to be believed", ruining his kingdom's finances¹². The coin sections for Amathous and Marion in Inscriptiones Graecae XV 1, published in 2020, came from her collaboration with Artemis Karnava³⁰.

Markou compiled the Cyprus chapter of the Survey of Numismatic Research for 2007-2013, and that for 2014-2020²⁸. Her Chronique numismatique chypriote VI, covering 2016-2022, continues Chronicles I to V published by Amandry²⁴. With Maria Iacovou she reassessed the bronze coinage of the last Paphian kings, Timarchos and Nikokles, starting from a coin found in the Palaepaphos Urban Landscape Project's 2017 season³¹. Their paper is "Integrating Numismatic Evidence into the Study of the Urban Landscape of Paphos", in Tekmeria 18³¹.

In 2019 she was the 65th Eric P. Newman Visiting Scholar at the American Numismatic Society's Graduate Summer Seminar¹⁸. Her The Royal Coinages of Kition and Idalion appeared in 2025 as Meletemata 89³². It studies 1,759 silver and bronze coins, 161 of Idalion and 1,598 of Kition, from the late sixth to the late fourth century BC, classified by a die study³².