Unnumbered pageScan 36 of 42
-19-
other exploited adventures. His own position seems to have been fragile. It may there be he, or his successor, who was deposed by the Achaean chieftains, when they took over the island's capital, Enkomi-Alasia, during the XIVth c. and have had built themselves a small palace, the building 18, we have found there in 1935. These Achaean conquest of Cyprus may be connected with a general mycenaean expansion during the XIVth c. B.C., the most famous episode of which, as some scholars now believe, may have been the Trojan War. Its date (beginning of XIIth c.) would, in this case, need correction.
The localisation in Cyprus of the most eastern foothold of the Achaeans would explain the reaction of the Hittites and their efforts to neutralize this menace on their south-eastern flank. It is probably from Cyprus [gap] came those Achaeans mentioned among the sea-raiders, who Merenptah (Merneptah) defeated at Perire (ca. 1220 B.C.). And it may have been this unsuccessful attempt to invade Egypte, which caused the weakening of the Achaean position in Cyprus. In any case, it was at that moment, towards the end of the XIIIth c. that the Achaean regime in Enkomi underwent a profound change. The inhabitants of the residence in Enkomi (building 18) lost their power and possessions and were replaced by another echaean (?) chieftain contemporary with the close style pottery and who may have possibly been Attarsiah or the man of Ilegeia. According to the Madduwatta text, they had taken over the island when Arzawaddu II (ca. 1320-1300) was king of the Hittites. This was but the last flicker of the Achaean position in the
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain