Sophocles Stavrinides

In the summer of 1889 the Cyprus Government appointed Sophocles Stavrinides Government Superintendent of the excavations at Tamassos, which Max Ohnefalsch-Richter was running for the Royal Berlin Museum. Michael Given calls it an "unenviable post", since Ohnefalsch-Richter had himself been turned down for the role because of the obvious conflict of interest³. Hans-Günter Buchholz describes Stavrinides as a Greek-Cypriot official and prints six of his letters to the Chief Secretary's office, dated 16 June, 23 June, 2 July, 10 July, 15 August and 29 August 1889, written first from Politiko and then from the monastery of Ayios Herakleidios, where the party lodged¹.

The letters report what he saw. On 23 June he wrote that he had asked Mr Law for a book in which to record the finds. On 10 July he complained that Ohnefalsch-Richter had had a tomb opened on a Sunday in his absence¹. His 29 August letter announced the end of the Politiko excavations. From 15 August he signed as Government Superintendent of the Excavations, and in the letter of 20 November as Government overseer¹. Given adds that in October he reported Ohnefalsch-Richter digging in the Pedhiaios river bed without permission or a landowner's contract, in the place where villagers said the Chatsworth Head had been found, and that Ohnefalsch-Richter was told to stop until the District Commissioner visited³. Buchholz places the division of the finds between the Government and Berlin on 20 to 22 November 1889¹.

The same year he was appointed government overseer for the Cyprus Exploration Fund's first season at Polis, which ran from February to April under J. A. R. Munro. In late June and July 1890 Munro and Stavrinides opened about eighty more tombs there². Nothing is recorded of his birth, later career or death.