Porphyrios Dikaios

Porphyrios was born in Nicosia and graduated from the Pancyprian Gymnasium.^[1] He studied archaeology in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in the British School at Athens (1924–1925) and the University of Liverpool (1925–1926). He interrupted his studies in Liverpool and continued at the University of Lyon and finally at the University of Sorbonne where he graduated in 1929.^[2]

After returning to Cyprus he was assigned at the age of 25 to the position of Assistant Curator of the Cyprus Museum (1929–1931) and a year later he started his own excavation work. He became Curator of the Cyprus Museum (1931–1960) and finally Director of the Department of Antiquities (1960–1963) after the independence of Cyprus from Britain. He conducted excavation work at Bellapais-Vounous (1931), in the Neolithic site of Khoirokitia, in the Chalcolithic site of Erimi (1933–1935), the Bronze Age site of Enkomi, as well as Sotira (1934) and Salamis, and identified the Philia culture; his work focused on Prehistoric Cyprus.^[3][4] He retired from the Department in 1963 and traveled to the United States where he taught at the University of Princeton and Brandeis University. In 1966 he moved to Heidelberg where he taught at the University of Heidelberg as a professor of Near Eastern archaeology until the end of his life.^[5][6][1]

In 2015 he was commemorated by a stamp from the Cyprus post.^[7]