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the content of copper oxide, sulphate and sulphide could thus be raised to nearly 80%. It was therefore in the form of an ore enriched with copper, or of raw copper ingots, that the product of the ancient mines of Cyprus was delivered to the smelting workshops on the Island, or to the exexporters of ingots (cf. Enkomi-Alasia II, in press).
Slag collected during the excavations at Enkomi showed on analysis that the copper could have been extracted from it completely or with residues of 3 to 6%, whereas the percentage of iron oxide they contain reaches 65% (op. cit., p. 63).
Iron was therefore obtained in Cyprus as a by-product of the treatment of the chalcopyrite. The qualities of this metal, its solidity and hardness, must have been recognised as early as the 12th c. by the founders of the Peoples of the North and of the Sea, who used it alongside copper and bronze. This has been proved by the discovery at Enkomi of large iron knives in tombs (Missions en Chypre, p. 52, 1977, tomb 6, no. 13, and p. 107; Enkomi- Alasia I, p. 219) and in post-Mycenaean houses of the 12th c. B.C. (a knife and an incomplete iron blade were cleared from the houses in the west sector of Enkomi, v. above fig. 9).
However, as the working of iron was more difficult, and required higher temperatures than that of bronze and copper, this new metal seems to have been used only rarely in the early period. Thus, the knives with curved blade and single cutting edge characteristic of the 12th c. level are still most often in bronze. The rarity of iron finds is also no doubt explained by the fact that this metal is more sensitive to corrosion, and resists less well than copper or bronze a stay of more than three millennia under the earth.
46. - A new example of these knives was found in place on the floor of beaten earth of one of the houses of the period of occupation of the town by the Peoples of the North and of the Sea. It is fitted with a handle veneered with ivory ending in a suspension ring. Damaged by a blow from a small pick during its clearing, the knife will need to be restored. But its shape is preserved, as shown by the sketch of Mr Courtois, who rightly underlined in his report the European character of this type of knife. It is rare indeed in the Mediterranean region in the 12th c., whereas hundreds of examples of this type are known from cremation cemeteries (urnfields) of the 12th and 11th c. found in Central Europe (Bavaria, Tyrol, Switzerland, Veneto, Etruria, Southern (South Italy and Sicily), fig. ...... (1). For some of these finds, with knives with a ring
(1) Cf. the corpus published by H. Müller-Karpe, Chronologie der Urnenfelderzeit, Berlin 1959.
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain