1. Semni Karouzou was the first woman to join the Greek Archaeological Service; she excavated in Crete, Euboea, Thessaly, and the Argolid, and worked as curator of ceramic collections at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens for over thirty years.
Semni Karouzou has been described by the archaeologists Marianna Nikolaidou and Dimitra Kokkinidou as "perhaps the most important woman in Greek archaeology", and by the newspaper To Vima as "the last representative of the generation of great archaeologists".
Semni Karouzou's father was a military officer, and her mother the French-educated daughter of a judge; her family moved frequently due to her father's career, finally settling in Athens.
Semni Karouzou took the name Papaspyridi-Karouzou on her marriage in 1930 to Christos Karouzos, an archaeologist.
Semni Karouzou studied archaeology at the University of Athens, where she was taught by the archaeologist Christos Tsountas.
Semni Karouzou joined the Greek Archaeological Service in 1921 as a curator of antiquities at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, becoming the first woman to do so.
Semni Karouzou then worked on excavations at Bronze Age sites at Herakleion, on Crete, and the classical site of Eretria, on Euboea.
Semni Karouzou held the post in Thessaly and then in the Argolid, where she excavated tombs from the Mycenaean and classical periods; worked in ancient Epidaurus; and worked to preserve historic buildings in the town of Nafplio, where she later published a guide.
In 1933, Semni Karouzou became curator of the ceramic collections at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, a post she held for over thirty years.
Semni Karouzou wrote extensively on the museum's collections of ceramics and stone monuments, as well as on new archaeological discoveries.
Semni Karouzou later recalled that "It was with pride for our people that I was assured, in the end of the war when the boxes were opened and the antiquities received, despite [the] fatally insufficient supervision [of the packing process] not a single gold object, no precious gem was missing".
In 1964, Semni Karouzou turned 67 and was forced to retire from the Archaeological Service due to a new law imposing an age limit on civil servants.
Three years later, the Greek military junta came to power, a month after Semni Karouzou's husband died of a heart attack.
Semni Karouzou was awarded honorary doctorates from the Universities of Lyon, Tubingen, and Thessaloniki for her scholarship and contributions to the field.
In total, Semni Karouzou published twenty books and over one hundred and twenty articles during the course of her career; she contributed to public access to archaeology through the publication of guidebooks to the National Archaeological Museum and to archaeological sites.
Semni Karouzou defined her own research methodology as attempting to reveal "the invisible meaning of ancient works".