Stylianos Alexiou

Stylianos Alexiou (, 13 February 1921 – 12 November 2013) was an archaeologist, philologist and university professor.

Biography Stylianos Alexiou was born in 1921 in Heraklion, Crete. He came from a learned family: his father was Lefteris Alexiou (1890–1964), a writer and philologist and he had Elli Alexiou and Galatea Kazantzakis (the first wife of Nikos Kazantzakis) for his aunts. His grandfather was the homonymous Stylianos Alexiou, the scholarly publisher of newspapers in Heraklion.

He studied at the School of Philosophy in the University of Athens (1939–46), from which he took his doctorate in 1959. He received a scholarship from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and remained for the academic year 1951–52 at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and from 1960 to 1961 he was at the University of Heidelberg on scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

In 1947 he worked as Prefect of Antiquities on Rhodes and in 1950 transferred to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. In 1960–61 he served as Ephor of Antiquities for Southern Crete, which has its seat in Chania, and in 1962 he took over direction of the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, until 1977 when he quit the General Ephorate of Antiquities. In 1973 and 1977 he had a place on the Archaeological Council of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.

In 1992 he was honored by the University of Padua for his contributions to Minoan archaeology and to Byzantine and Modern Greek philology. In 1993 the critical faculty of the National Literary Awards honoured him for all his inspired work with the Special National Literary Award for Literature (1993), while in November 2000 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens.

Archaeological work His principal archaeological works are the excavations of the chamber graves of Katsambas (the harbour of Knossos) from 1951 to 1963 and the early Minoan tholos tombs of Levinos-Lenda in 1958–66, his re-organisation and expansion by one-third of the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, with the addition of new wings (five new rooms with about twenty new exhibits), the founding of the Museums of Chania (1962) and Agios Nikolaos (1969), the development of the theory of the coordinated and anactoric character of the Minoan emporium (1958), the identification of the fortifications of Minoan Crete, his research on Luxor in Egypt, the study of Minoan sanitary cisterns (1972), and the location of Panormus-Apollonius and other cities of Greek Crete (1974). Finally, he attended to the special legislative designation of and protection of the Knossos area. Books Monographs , Ηράκλειο,1964 [Minoan Civilization] (English translation 1968, German 1976, French 1979) , Βιβλιοθήκη της εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας, Αθήνα, 1967 [The Late Minoan tombs of the Harbour of Knossos (Katsambas)] , Ηράκλειο, 1953 [Directory of the Museum of Crete] , Ηράκλειο, 1977 [From the poetic work of Nikos Kazantzakis] , Ηράκλειο 1979 [The Akritic Lays: The Problem of the validity of Text Five, Dating & reconstruction of the villages hermeneutically] , Αθήνα,1981 [Linguistic Studies] . Στιγμή, Athen 1985 [Cretan literature and its epoch. Philological and historical studies.] ,εκδ. Στιγμή, Αθήνα, 1997 [Studies in the Byzantine Vernacular, Stigmi editions, 1997] , εκδ Στιγμή, Αθήνα, 1999 [Studies in Cretan Philology, Stigmi editions, 1999]

Anthologies , 1954 [Cretan Anthology] , Ερμής,Αθήνα, 1971 [Apokopos & Vaskopoula: Second Unabridged Popular Edition]

Translations Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616, , Στιγμή, 1998 [Sonnets, a Translation, Stigmi edition, 1998] , Στιγμή, 2004 [Collaborative work, The Chamber, Stigmi edition, 2004] (translations of works of John Keats, Charles Baudelaire, Owen Meredith, Stephane Mallarme, Stefan George, Henri de Regnier, Francis Jammes, W.B.Yeats and T.S.Eliot into Greek) , Στιγμή, 2009 [Collaborative work, "Catalogue 24", Stigmi edition, 2009] (Contributor of a commentary on and translation of Homer)

Critical editions , Ηράκλειο, 1963 [The Voskopoula, a poetic idyll of 1600] , Ερμής, 1980 (ανατυπώσεις: 1984, 1994, 2000) [Vitsentzos Kornaros, Erotokritos] . Ερμής, Athen 1985 [Basil Digenes Akrites and the Song of Armouris. Critical edition with introduction, notes, and glossary] , εκδ.Στιγμή,Αθήνα, 1994 [ Dionysios Solomos, poems and prose Sigmi edition, 1994] ,μετάφραση, εκδ Στιγμή, Αθήνα, 1999 Dionysios Solomos, Meditations, Stigmi editions, 1999] , εκδ.Κίχλη 2013 [ Dionysios Solomos, 1798-1857, The Cretan, Kikhli edition, 2013] ,εκδ Στιγμή 2014 [ Dionysios Solomos, 1798-1857, Dialogue, Stigmi edition, 2014] , εκδ.Στιγμή 2014 [ Dionysios Solomos, 1798-1857, The Cretan Stigmi edition, 2014] , εκδ.Στιγμή 2014 [ Dionysios Solomos, 1798-1857, Lambros, Stigmi edition, 2014] , εκδ.Στιγμή 2014 [ Dionysios Solomos, 1798-1857, The Free Besieged, Stigmi edition, 2014]

Articles , Κρητικά Χρονικά τομ.ΙΒ (1958), σσ. 179-299 [The Minoan Goddess with Upraised Hands, Kritika Chronia, vol. XII, pp. 179-299] , Εποχές, 9, (1964), σελ. 422-466["The palace and city in Minoan Crete: a new theory of Cretan community", Epoches, 9, 1964, pp. 422–466]