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

- 14 -

cemetary as the Swedes and their predecessors admitted, but a town with family tombs beneath the dwellings.

Now, without a word of explanation to me, here is the new version of Dikaios of this important find: "A preliminary examination shows that the tombs belongs to the LC II period (late Bronze Age); it contained much Levanto-Mycenean pottery and ceased to be in use at the end of the period. _It therefore antedates the construction of our compound._" He is however, obliged to recognize "The builders of the latter must have been aware of the existence of the tomb and took care to build the northern facade so as to avoid the dromos which was naturally a weak spot." I leave this matter to the reflexion of an architect and M. Megaw will help us to put this reasoning right, I am confident.

Here too, how clear and straightforward the position becomes when we admit, as I do, that tomb and the original building are the same LC II period, as Dikaios was ready in his first report to me. [handwritten: signature]

He reports also (p.173) a third tomb "under the original floor of room XIII (=V), in which were collected vases of LC II (=late Bronze Age). He says it has not yet been explored. It would have been better to ascertain the relationship between this tomb and the original building, before dating the latter, as Dikaios knows, that this relationship of the LC II tombs to the building above are vital for the chronology of Enkomi and the stratigraphy of the site. But it looks as if my discoveries and conclusions prior to his research have no bearing on his finds.

And now, disregarding my interpretation, one of his major mistakes explodes into the base of my work at Enkomi, as if to wreck it:

P.173 ss.: "It thus appears that we have in the particular site examined by us the following earlier remains: tombs of the Middle Cypriote, architectural remains of LC I, tombs of LC II, the nature of which has yet to be identified. But what is remarkable is that we found no burials of the period of the compound, i.e. LC III, except etc... These are isolated examples and we have yet to find burials with pottery of the period of the compound, e.g. the wavy line type of which there must be many in some part of the site."

In other words in Dikaios' site there are: a) tombs of Middle Cypriote, but nothing is said of possible structures of this period; b) tombs of LC II (late Bronze Age), the position of which were known to the builders of the great ashlar compound, but are nevertheless dissociated from it and considered as forming a necropolis previous to the compound;