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Handwritten: Summary for the Academy of 1.VI.51
New discoveries at Enkomi in Cyprus (excavation campaign 1950). by Mr Claude F.A. Schaeffer, Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
The campaign was devoted essentially to the exploration of the large building discovered in 1949 in the western part of the town. The building, provided with 4 carriage gates, constitutes, we are now certain, the palace of Enkomi of the second half of the 14th c. and of the 13th c. B.C., erected on a site available at the edge of the older quarters of the town, where we shall have to seek the former palace of the king of Alasia at the time of Amenophis IV (Tell el Amarna). The second palace now discovered covers an area of 1900 m2. It is by far the largest and, by the quality of its ashlar architecture, the finest building so far uncovered at Enkomi. It consists of a central body and two wings, left in places unfinished. The upper courses consist of two slabs placed on edge, leaving a void between their inner faces. To increase adherence, the bed of the first course presents cuttings calculated to receive the edge of the blocks of the next course. A flat slab laid on top of the double part closes the void and serves as support for the next course. Certain details of the construction recall Mycenaean and Cretan architecture, the direction in which we must seek its origin. On the other hand, neighbouring Syria and Ugarit, as well as Egypt and Anatolia, provide no element of comparison.
According to the archaeological material recovered, the palace was built between 1350 and 1250 and remained in use until about 1225 B.C. It was then that its occupants, surprised by an attack, were expelled or exterminated. The residence was then reoccupied without structural change by people who used the Mycenaean pottery of the final style or close style, identical down to the detail with that of Jalissos (Rhodes). These events, which took place between 1225 and about 1200, concern only the ruling class of Enkomi. The tombs of private persons show no trace of this intrusion corresponding to the close Style phase.
The new chiefs of the town, installed in our palace at Enkomi, respected the great family burial chamber fitted out in its basement and the numerous gold objects which had been accumulated there. The ruling house at Enkomi at the end of the 13th c. was therefore dispossessed by a chief probably of the same origin. The weapons, the pottery and the jewellery, as well as the traditions
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