Lazaris Philippi

In the autumn of 1878 the men digging at Enkomi said they worked for Lazaris Philippi, "the servant of Alessandro Palma di Cesnola". According to Stanley-Price, five workmen's statements agree that Lazaris employed them for about six months, at first some 60 men¹. Alessandro Palma di Cesnola visited only occasionally; the last visit was about two months before the October arrests. Lazaris stopped the work on 2 October and kept the finds in a ruined house at Enkomi, borrowing the keys from its owner, Panagia Hadji Cristofi¹.

On 4 October Lt E. Spencer seized pottery and glass at Enkomi¹. At the trial Lazaris was the last of seven prosecution witnesses. He said he had not engaged the workmen, who came of their own accord, but confirmed that he rented the land and that his employer reimbursed him. Alessandro was fined 4 liras, which Wolseley remitted, and the antiquities were confiscated; Stanley-Price reports no charge against Lazaris¹.

In 1886 Max Ohnefalsch-Richter wrote that in the Cyprus Museum at Nicosia "der Mann Lazari", the man he had earlier named as Alessandro's servant, had stuck the small heads and fragments of the Voni statues on plaster blocks, mostly wrongly, under the supervision of the museum's secretary, Lieutenant Sinclair. Ohnefalsch-Richter wrote that he had the work undone².