Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Enkomi

59 field photographs, 337 object photographs · 1927–31

Sites: Enkomi, Stylli

This series holds 396 photographs from the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's excavation in the Late Bronze Age necropolis at Enkomi, carried out under Erik Sjöqvist in June and July 1930. The 59 field photographs show tomb chambers during excavation, with skeletons, stones and grave goods in place; Tombs 3, 6, 11, 18 and 19 appear most often. The 337 object photographs show the finds singly or in groups, labelled with the expedition's own numbers: E.18.13 is Enkomi, Tomb 18, object 13. Most are pottery, filed under Levanto-Helladic Ware, Base-Ring and Bichrome Wheel-made, with gold and silver, bone and bronze.

The necropolis had been dug by Murray, Smith and Christian in 1896 and plundered for more than thirty years afterwards. The expedition opened more than 200 large trial pits, many of them on tombs destroyed by Byzantine buildings, before it found an undisturbed area. There it excavated 22 rock-cut tombs, several with large amounts of Mycenaean pottery, most of them of Late Cypriot II. The results were published in the first volume of the expedition's report. Three photographs here show finds from Stylli.

See the excavation page, the tomb pages (for example Tomb 18 and Tomb 19), and the find lists in the field notebooks DII:1e and DII:1f.

Sources

Gjerstad, E., Lindros, J., Sjöqvist, E. and Westholm, A. 1934. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Finds and Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, vol. I. Stockholm, pp. xviii, 467–575.
Göransson, K. 2012. 'The Swedish Cyprus Expedition, the Cyprus collections in Stockholm and the Swedish excavations after the SCE'. Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes 42, p. 403.
Karageorghis, V. et al. 2003. The Cyprus Collections in the Medelhavsmuseet. Nicosia, p. 24.