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in ashlar, its vast Cyclopean enclosure and its clay tablets in covered with long texts in an advanced script, but not yet deciphered, and the jewellery, faience, alabaster of the rich offerings grave goods found in the family burial chambers on the same site.
The Peoples of the North and of the Sea, who succeeded in the Island, as in southern and Aegean Greece, to the Mycenaean civilisation, drew their prosperity mainly from their metallurgical industry, and in particular from the manufacture of weapons, as attested by the recent discovery of four fine swords, 60 cm long, in the hiding place of an armourer at Enkomi-Alasia containing a hundred other bronzes, including a small cult chariot.
Let us not forget that the Island of Cyprus was renowned for its copper deposits from high antiquity, and from the beginning of the second millennium, as attested by the texts found by Mr André Parrot at Mari, on the Middle Euphrates, where copper is designated, according to Mr G. Dossin, as "Alasian" metal. The bronze founders and armourers of the Peoples of the North and of the Sea therefore had on the island mineral riches particularly abundant.
Moreover, and this is not yet a simple chance, the copper ore of Cypriot copper belonged to the category of chalcopyrite, or copper pyrite (sulphide of copper and iron: CuFeS2) and rarely assayed more than 4% copper (cf. our Missions en Chypre, p. 97 ff.); the treatment by ancient founders therefore consisted in freeing the ore, by roasting and smelting, of a large part of the non-cupriferous matter, and thus enriching its copper content.
The chemical analysis of the pre-Roman ores and slags from the mines of Skouriotissa in the Troodos mountains of the island has shown (cf. our Missions en Chypre, p. 97)
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65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain