George Athanasios Mozeras

George Athanasios Mozeras (1868 to 1917) appears in the history of the first Lambousa treasure, the Byzantine silver now in the British Museum, as the private owner from whom it passed to the duc de Dino. A note by C. D. Cobham, printed in Peristianes's history of 1910, says the silver was acquired in March 1897 by the duc "from the private collection of Mr G A Mozeras from Larnaca"¹.

Robert Merrillees describes him as a prosperous businessman from a well-known commercial firm and the largest landowner in Larnaca¹. Merrillees reads the hoard as a workman's find made while quarrying near the Acheiropoietos monastery in 1897 and kept from the authorities, and judges it entirely plausible that Mozeras held it and sold it to the duc de Dino¹. No sale record is cited, and how it came to Mozeras is not known. Merrillees calls Mozeras's acquisition "irregular, if not illegal"¹; no proceedings against him are recorded. The British Museum's records say the duc bought the silver in Cyprus for £150 and asked £1,000; the museum paid £500 in 1899¹.

His family's collection of coins, seal stones and gold jewellery was registered with the Cyprus Museum's Committee of Management in 1906 as no. 135, and in 1911 he asked permission to sell it or take it out of the island¹. After his death in 1917 the family fell on hard times, and their house was bought by Mrs Evanthia Pieridou, who left it to Larnaca municipality as a town hall¹. In 1927 his widow, Eliza (née Fatala), offered the Museum a pair of gold earrings, a Byzantine cross and a gold Byzantine ring, on condition that she could export the rest¹.