Pavlos Flourentzos

Pavlos Flourentzos was the Department of Antiquities archaeologist who took over the excavation of the lower city of Amathus in 1991 and who, as Director of Antiquities, questioned the acquisitions of the collector George Basil Palma in 2007^3,7.

He lived from 1947 to 2023¹. In 1984 he directed the second season of the Department's rescue excavations at Alassa-Ayia Mavri, on the west bank of the Limnatis river⁴. He returned in 1986, when late Roman floors lay beneath the earlier complex⁵. In 1990 he excavated two multiple-burial tombs of Cypro-Archaic II date found during construction at Agios Athanasios; they held White Painted V and plain white pottery, jewellery, a faience bead, an iron spearhead and an Athenian lekythos².

In 1977 he published "Four Archaic terracottas from Cypriote private collections" in the Department's annual report¹². One of the four was described as "probably from Athienou", and Hardy argues that its find-spot was in fact known⁶.

From 1991 the Department opened a new excavation in the lower city of Amathus, at Palea Lemesos near the harbour area, with Flourentzos in charge, succeeding Michael Loulloupis, who had worked for many years around the agora. The first seasons found a large building complex of two storeys³. In 1995 and 1996 he directed Department excavations at Paralimni Nissia in the Famagusta district, a ceramic Neolithic settlement with seventeen buildings². The results appeared in 2008 as The Neolithic Settlement of Paralimni, which he wrote with C. McCartney, P. Croft and D. Reese¹⁷. A study of Amathus by Pierre Aupert and Flourentzos is dated 2008⁹.

His other publications include Excavations in the Kouris Valley I. The Tombs (1991)¹³, A Guide to the Larnaka Museum (1996)¹⁴, the catalogue of objects in Highlights of Ancient Cypriote Ceramic Art from the Collections of the Cyprus Museum (1997)¹⁵, and an article on the iconography of the deer in Cyprus (2002)¹⁶.

The preface to City of Gold lists him among the Directors of Antiquities, after Sophocles Hadjisavvas and before Maria Hadjicosti⁸. In that office he permitted the Athienou Archaeological Project to work in the Malloura valley¹¹, and he gave Benjamin Costello access to the Kourion Earthquake House material¹⁰. He allowed Robert Merrillees to study the Cyprus Museum records⁷.

On 12 April 2007, after Merrillees lectured on the chemist and collector George Basil Palma, Flourentzos, then Director, expressed doubts about the propriety of Palma's acquisition and disposal of antiquities. He pointed to the register of private collections kept under the Antiquities Law of 1935⁷.