Maria Hadjicosti

The Gazette of 1979 lists Maria Hadjicosti as a Museum Guide, appointed in the Department of Antiquities from 16 April 1979²⁰. In the years that followed she took part in excavations at Kition, Pyla-Kokkinokremnos and Maa-Palaeokastro¹. From 1986 until 1994 she was successively Archaeological Officer and Archaeological Officer A', conducting surveys and rescue excavations across the island¹. In 1991 a UNESCO grant enabled her to take postgraduate studies in museology, which, CAARI wrote, resulted in new local and site museums and in exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad¹.

She was promoted to the permanent post of Curator of Ancient Monuments from 1 November 1998²¹. From 1998 to 2006 she held the Head Curatorship of Monuments, in charge of the restoration and management of all archaeological sites and ancient monuments on Cyprus, and in 2006 she took the Head Curatorship of Museums, responsible for all the Department's state museums¹. Three times in 2004 the Gazette appointed her Acting Director in addition to her own post: from 16 January to 15 February, from 16 March to 15 April, and from 16 May to 15 June²². The displays of the Local Museum of Marion and Arsinoe at Polis, opened in 2000, were chosen by her²³.

In 1988 she excavated a Late Cypriot tomb at Mathiatis, found when the Water Development Department laid pipes on the road to Lythrodondas²⁴. In 1988-89 she supervised the excavation of fifteen more tombs at the Ayia Paraskevi cemetery in Nicosia, which had been looted and mostly part-destroyed by bulldozers before the Department was told of them²⁵. Her finds showed the necropolis in continuous use from the Early into the Late Bronze Age, and she offered her account only as a short preliminary note, with a full study planned²⁵.

In 1990 she directed a two-week rescue excavation at Moutti tou Ayiou Serkou, Sanida, in the Limassol district²⁶. In 1991 she excavated six Cypro-Archaic to Cypro-Classical chamber tombs at Agioi Omologites near Nicosia, and she also excavated a Cypro-Archaic tomb at Mari²⁴. In 1995 she and Maria Rosaria Belgiorno identified a large Early Cypriot III/Middle Cypriot settlement at Mavrorakia, Pyrgos²⁷.

The sources disagree on the years of her trial excavations at Pyla-Koutsopetria, 1993 and 1999 or 1993 and 1997: CAARI and the BCH chronicles give 1993 and 1999, the second season centring on the complex dug in 1993 and the apse of a nearby Early Christian basilica^1,28,29. Ellen Herscher gives 1993 and 1997, and reports that Hadjicosti took part of a large building complex there to be a basilica²⁷.

Her own account says the Department's scheduled excavations at Idalion started in 1991 under her direction, to see whether the city walls and monumental buildings on the West Terrace, dug by the American Mission, extended further². The first season ran from 7 October to 15 November 1991 on the north terrace of Ambeleri, where 225 m2 were dug to a depth of 2 m³⁰. In 1992 four parallel rooms were cleared at the north end of the terrace, and in 1993 the third campaign found the administrative centre of the Classical period and much of the fortification wall around the west acropolis^31,32. The 1994 campaign worked on what the chronicle called the Phoenician administrative centre, and the fifth, in 1995, identified it as the seat of Phoenician rule at Idalion from the second half of the 5th to the end of the 4th century BC, its many inscriptions the economic archives of that administration^33,34.

The sixth campaign, in 1996, produced Late Bronze Age workshops not known before and more Phoenician inscriptions³⁵. In 1997 the municipality of Idalion gave money and help, and councillors and other residents worked on the dig as volunteers³⁶. The eighth campaign, in 1998, cleared the administrative building over about 1,000 m2 and gave particular attention to restoration³⁷. The ninth (1999) set out to expose the fortification north of the building and its relation to the older walls found by the American Mission, the tenth (2000) centred on the Classical administrative building, and the eleventh (2001) on the olive press and tower B^29,38,39. M. G. Guzzo Amadasi and José Ángel Zamora López date her excavations on the Ampileri acropolis between 1991 and 2012, over 5,225 m2⁴⁰.

In her 1995 and 1997 syntheses she described two groups of Phoenician economic records, ostraka from Room 1 of the north wing and inscriptions in black paint on gypsum plaques from the west wing, and concluded that the complex was part of the administrative centre of the Phoenician domination of Idalion^2,15. She proposed that it was put up in a hurry, "most probably immediately after the Phoenician occupation"².

The counts of the archive differ with the date of writing. Maurice Sznycer reported nearly 135 Phoenician documents, a number that by her announcement of June 2004 the latest campaigns had practically doubled⁴¹. Her case study in the 2012 Brussels catalogue speaks of "more than 500 Phoenician inscriptions"⁴². Amadasi Guzzo and Zamora give 733 inscriptions, 31 of them in syllabic Greek and the rest in Phoenician⁴⁰.

Sznycer, who became her friend on his missions to Cyprus, credited her with the "idée lumineuse" (brilliant idea) of excavating on the hill of Dali-Ampileri and congratulated her on her "sensationnelles découvertes"; he also wrote that the finds were still to a degree officially unpublished, as she was overwhelmed with scientific work⁴¹. Pamela Gaber credits her excavations with discovering the Phoenician administrative complex founded around 450 BCE, and notes that the Department had not pursued the founding levels of the northern structure⁷. Körner wrote in 2017 that to his knowledge the documents had not been published in full, and Anja Ulbrich in 2011 counted her figurines from the palace area among unpublished finds^43,44.

CAARI announced that on 1 February 2010 she became Director, succeeding Pavlos Flourentzos, and that she had served as Acting Director in the months before; it congratulated her as the Department's first female director¹. Wikipedia instead gives her directorship as 2009 to 2013 and says it ended with her retirement in 2013¹⁹. As Director she chaired the Museum Education Committee, and she wrote the foreword to Ancient Cyprus: Cultures in Dialogue, the Brussels exhibition held for Cyprus' Presidency of the Council of the European Union^42,45. She entrusted Anna Satraki with the excavation of the Platia cemetery at Idalion, and gave Ewdoksia Papuci-Władyka the first excavation licence for the Agora of Nea Paphos, where work began in 2011^46,47.