Dealer · Agent

Michael H. Kattis

fl. 1916–1949 · Cyprus

Cypriot dealer and agent, active 1916–1949. Excavated at Kafizin.

Life and work

1916–1918
By his own account, with three partners, began night digging at Kafizin and continued at irregular intervals for about twenty years, selling the finds locally to tourists.
KafizinMitford 1980 Mitford 1950
c. 1920
Mitford writes that some of Kattis's finds were smuggled out of Cyprus shortly after the First World War by a Lefkara lace merchant, by then long dead, and that both the Philadelphia and Copenhagen pieces were supplied by that merchant ('I have no doubt'). This is Mitford's inference, not a record.
Mitford 1980
1939
Told George Anastasiou, Senior Attendant of the Cyprus Museum, to investigate Kafizin hill; the Museum's two days of digging in August 1939 collected 134 inscribed sherds.
KafizinMitford 1980 Mitford 1950
1949
Gave Mitford an account of his digging at Kafizin in a long discussion; Mitford found him 'reminiscent and informative' and, where he could verify the claims, 'tolerably veracious'. The Cyprus Museum's formal excavation of Kafizin (Dikaios and Mitford) took place in June and July 1949.
Mitford 1980 Mitford 1950
1949
NamedDescribed by Mitford in 1950 as 'a retired tymborychos of some notoriety' (tomb-robber) and in 1980 as one of those who 'enjoyed the freedom of Kafizin' for twenty years. No charge or proceeding is recorded in the sources read; the digging is known from his own account to Mitford.
Mitford 1950 Mitford 1980

2 people

Inscribed Kafizin amphora and nine inscribed sherds (Copenhagen Inv. 8364-8372)
From KafizinNational Museum, Copenhagen 8364-83721924Mitford 1980
Inscribed Kafizin bowl (Mitford's no. 138, the Philadelphia bowl)
From KafizinUniversity Museum, Philadelphia (Penn Museum)by 1926Mitford 1980

1.Terence B. Mitford (1980). The Nymphaeum of Kafizin: The Inscribed Pottery. Berlin and New York, Walter de Gruyter.
2.T. B. Mitford (1950). “Kafizin and the Cypriot Syllabary”. The Classical Quarterly 44, 97-106. Online