Report by Courtois on Enkomi 1970Jacques-Claude Courtois

Continued from scan 2

… is attested in the Aegean world, at Rhodes (necropolis of Jalisos), and in protohistoric Europe in the earliest Urnfields of Tyrol , of Bavaria and of Bohemia . Its presence now on the island of Cyprus, sewould in our view be linked to the parallel and contemporary course of the famous tongued swords with parallel edges of the type of Tomb I8 and of the bronze well of Enkomi 1967 ( type known as Menzingen in Europe ).

In the rooms adjoining the south-west of the House of the Knives, one has observed the constant superimposition of level and floor IV , at about a fifteen centimetres above the fine white floor V, here lacking a layer of ash . At the foot of a N-S wall in brown mud-brick on a foundation of three courses of rubble, one cleared a burial, individually oriented E-W, the skull at the west having been anciently destroyed by a "pit" ; this burial of Cypriot Iron I was accompanied by a dome-shaped seal of the Sea Peoples type , decorated with an engraved bird .

Further east , two other seals of the same style, and of good workmanship, procome from levels III and IV of Cypriot Iron I ; from level III again, it is worth mentioning a circular kiln measuring one metre in diameter, in a rectangular room of 2 m 90 by 1 m 60 . Around this room, the stratigraphic excavation has revealed thick layers of ash fine grey, filled with sherds of pottery of Mycenaean III C 1 (Close style) ; these layers reach 60 cm in thickness in certain places . Below, fills contained sherds of the end of the Middle Bronze and the beginning of the Cypriot Late Bronze , whereas the intermediate periods of Late Cypriot here largely were absent . They were, however, met with in another trench (N-S) opened parallel to the trench-sounding of the 1949 campaign . There, important remains of walls of Late Cypriot 2 were identified, despite the disturbances due to the abundance of 'pits' or clandestine excavations. Several figurines of bovids in terracotta, and a lamp with a bull's head come from this sector, which on the other hand lacked constructions of Cypriot Iron I .

-( Jacques-Claude Courtois )

30 . XI . 1970