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The elongated model of the ingots found at Enkomi, of Cypriot Iron I, with its characteristic handles, is also found in Crete, not among the originals from the excavations, but among the hieroglyphic signs of the accounting tablets of Knossos, of the Linear B script.
Dated today to the period between 1250 and 1100 before our era, these tablets are contemporary with the period to which, according to our finds, the copper ingots from Enkomi[handwritten: of Cyprus] must now be attributed.
The distribution of these ingots from Cyprus to Crete and to Mycenae (perhaps we must also count among them those found [handwritten: in Sardinia] to the west as far as Sicily[handwritten: of KYMÉ in EUBOEA and those] and to the north those which were retrieved from the sea off Adalia), clearly indicates that this was a trade in metal which took the sea route.
We thus arrive at the conclusion that it is to the Sea Peoples, and more particularly to those who had made themselves masters of Cyprus at the beginning of the 12th c., that the diffusion of the copper ingots of the type now known from Enkomi must be attributed.[handwritten: among whom there are Phoenicians identified in Western Asia for their metallurgical experiments]
If the new occupants of Cyprus at the beginning of the Iron Age thus enjoyed for four or five generations a peace that no external intervention has [handwritten: been able to] disturb, they had at Enkomi to face a curious threat[handwritten: ,] whose nature one would not easily suspect, in a country with such a dry present climate: flooding during the rainy season, [handwritten: in] [handwritten: the] western quarters of the town, situated downhill.
Indeed, after the reworkings carried out among the ruins of the palace on the occasion of the installation of the foundry workshops during the first half of the 12th c., corresponding to floor IV, we observed that new transformations had become necessary before and
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain