Letter from Schaeffer to Dikaios and Megaw on the joint mission, with analysis of Dikaios's excavation resultsClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

20. juni 50

Le 20 Juin 1950.

Dear Megaw, dear Dikaios,

I have received the two packets and the plans, with thanks. (Please credit my account with you for £ 1/- corresponding to 1.100 frs for postage, receipt included).

I am sending you herewith my cheque N° 840232 on Barclay's Bank, Famagousta, for £ 238/- for the acquisition of 3 additional plots, according to your letter of 28th april.

I confirm my cable to you dated 12.VI: "Received Dikaios' contribution two packets thanks,sorry report serious misinterpretation of stratigraphy and chronology mainbuilding stop please postpone digging Enkomi until further operations agreed aifletter follows."

The next daysI received your reply: "Regrets disagreement on interpretation stop work resumed at Enkomi ninth june stop pending receipt your letter have instructed Dikaios limit work to removing dumps, comma opening toplayers east west excavated area and trenching north town wall."

I cabled back on June 14th: "Please stop dig at level floor one no objections working townwall thanks."

Certainly my cable must have been a surprise to you, but it cannot have been as great as my astonishment when reading Dikaios' paper, where he arrives at conclusions overthrowing most of what he reported to me in his letters written during the dig and what he told me verbally last year when I saw him after his dig.

In short, I am proposing to you to arrange that this year's dig of Dikaios coincide with my season as it is foreseen in the charter of the combined expedition. Or, as Dikaios has already begun, to do only now the townwall work, removing of dumps and postpone all work below top floor one until I come over.

In this way we could examine all three the nature and date of floor V (and earlier ones) which Dikaios has misinterpretated, as I will try to show here. Now, as the expedition house is enlarged, there would be no practical difficulty to work at the same time. Dikaios and I would share the two front rooms, my architects the two backrooms. Dikaios retains the direction of his dig with Georgios, I could use Michaelis and we could share the specialists. In this way we could exchange our observations.