Theophilus Mogabgab

Theophilus Mogabgab, a surveyor and draughtsman from Famagusta, drew Byzantine monuments for Soteriou and, in 1935, became the Department of Antiquities' officer for Famagusta. He had worked for the Railways and the Lands Registration and Survey Departments before joining the Department². In 1931 Andreas Soteriou, invited by the Church of Cyprus to survey Byzantine remains, hired him and J. Pericleous to draw elevations and plans³.

Before 1935 the Cyprus government favoured him as the new Director or Curator of Monuments, though he had no archaeological or architectural qualifications, while George Hill and the Colonial Office preferred an English architect. Hill nonetheless recommended him strongly, and John Hilton seconded him from Land Registration and Survey in 1935 as Antiquities Officer for Famagusta with a tourism brief¹. He opened a tourism office in old Famagusta¹.

His drawings follow continental conventions of ground plan and section, and include plans for Porphyrios Dikaios at Pyla and the stone-by-stone plan of the Maison des Bronzes at Enkomi for Claude Schaeffer². A. H. S. Megaw hired him and Pericleous to assist with Christian monuments³. Megaw's annual reports record the citadel courtyard begun and the Ravelin gallery cleared in 1949-50, the Land Gate outworks and rock-cut ditch in 1953, and more of the Venetian outwork in 1955^5,6,7. He compiled the Supplementary Excerpts on Cyprus, published at Nicosia⁹.