Hadji Georgi Styllis

Robert Hamilton Lang wrote that the tomb-diggers of Dali in the 1860s were "led chiefly by two men": Hasen, a Turk attached to the American consulate, and "the other old Hagge Georgi, the finder of the 'Tablet of Dali'". Of the second he added that he "was chiefly my man, and had wonderful luck". In 1869 Hagge Georgi "sent me a pressing request" to come to Dali, and the discovery was a temple nine feet underground at Idalion¹. Anna Marangou, who gives him the name Hadgi Georgi Styllis, quotes Lang for the spring of 1868, when he brought news that workmen had found a colossal bearded statue in a field belonging to his son Sotiri; two months of digging followed, and Lang reports at least a thousand statues and statuettes².

Luigi Palma di Cesnola called him "an old Greek peasant, called Hadji Jorghi" who had brought him fragments of sculpture from Dali, one reason for settling there. On arriving, Cesnola saw that Hadji Jorghi had only extracted them from a mound of debris left by earlier excavations⁵. Perrot and Chipiez, on Cesnola's testimony, say that the two silver bowls now in the Louvre were found at Dali by "Hadji-Georghi", a story Robert Merrillees rejects, writing that "citing Cesnola as an authority is like using Schliemann as a reliable witness"³. Einar Gjerstad wrote that a Hadji Georghis, grandfather of the 1930 owner of Ambelleri, found the bowls, iron swords and the Idalion tablet in the 1850s⁴.

Lang and Cesnola both call him old. Cesnola told of his end: as a very old man he had given his property to his sons and supported himself by digging, stood guarantor for relatives' debts, was marched to Larnaca by the Cadi of Dali and held for about two months, was released when the medical officer said he would die, and the day after reaching Dali was found dead in one of his favourite tombs⁵. No date is given; Lang has him alive in 1869.