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a hundred other bronzes, one of which was a small chariot used in cult practices.
The island of Cyprus was famous for its deposits of copper as far back as the beginning of the second millennium B.C., as is testified in the texts found at Mari, on the Middle-Euphrates, where copper is designated as the "alasian" metal. The smelters of bronze and the armourers of the Northand Sea-People, in occupying the island in the early XIIth c. B.C., thus took advantage of its particularly abundant mineral wealth. The analysis of slags collected during the excavations at Enkomi, has shown that the copper could be extracted totally or with a residue of 3 to 6 %, while the percentage of iron oxide which it contained reached 65%. The iron was therefore obtained in Cyprus as a by-product from the processing of the copper pyrites. The advantages of this metal, its solidity and its hardness has soon been appreciated by the smelters of the North- and Sea-People, who used it concurrently with copper and bronze. This is proved by the discovery at Enkomi of long iron knives in the post-mycenaean tombs and habitations of the XII th. c. B.C.
One of these knives, with a blade of bronze, has now been found, in situ, on a soil of beaten earth in one of the houses from the period of the city's occupation by the North- and Sea-Peoples. It is fitted with an ivory plated handle, ending in a small link used for suspension. Hundreds of knives of this particular type are known from the Late Bronze Age necropolae of incineration burials, found in Central Europe (Bavaria, the Tyrol, Switzerland, Venetia, Etruria) and Southern Europe (Italy and Sicily). In some of these finds, these knives were accompanied by long, bronze swords, identical to those - four in number - which were taken out [handwritten: of)] the well of the armourer of Enkomi, [redacted]. These two types of weapon are therefore contemporary in Northern, Central and Southern Europe, as well as in the islands of Eastern Mediterranean. We have here without doubt, weapons of northern and central european origin, which had reached the countries and islands of the Aegean including Cyprus, from Italy and through the Balkans, by the trade of arms, or during wanderings of armed populations.
The new finds at Enkomi-Alasia prove now that arms of this type were produced on the island. And these copies are so well made that they cannot be distinguished from their european prototypes. It is permitted to conclude that the armourers in Cyprus who forged these weapons, were elements of these same North- and Sea-Peoples who had invaded the island at the beginning of the XIIth c.B.C.
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain