Porphyrios Dikaios


Porphyrios Dikaios FSA was a Cypriot archaeologist born in Nicosia. He studied archaeology in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in the British School at Athens and the University of Liverpool. He interrupted his studies in Liverpool to continue them at the University of Lyon and finally the University of the Sorbonne where he graduated in 1929. After returning to Cyprus he was assigned at the age of 25 to the position of Assistant Curator of the Cyprus Museum and a year later he started his own excavation work. He became Curator of the Cyprus Museum and finally Director of the Department of Antiquities after the independence of Cyprus from Britain. He conducted excavation work in the Neolithic site of Khoirokitia, the Bronze Age site of Enkomi and identified the Philia culture; his work focused on Prehistoric Cyprus. 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.

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