Letter·34 CDF art. 168-3·16 March 1949

Communication to the Académie on the 1948 Enkomi excavation season, with Dikaios's covering letter to SchaefferPorphyrios Dikaios

·

Typed in French. Every line is transcribed and translated, and the English sits beside the scan.

Scan 21 of letter 34 CDF art. 168-3 (Communication to the Académie on the 1948 Enkomi excavation season, with Dikaios's covering letter to Schaeffer), typed in French. The transcription and translation follow.

Scan: Collège de France, Paris, 34 CDF art. 168-3, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Page 10Scan 21 of 26

On the other hand we must recognise in our statue elements that relate to the East: the horns, a sign of divinity, the loincloth and the position of the left hand are so many Eastern elements introduced into Cyprus through very probably from Syria; in particular the position of the left hand can be attributed to Egyptian influence that reached Cyprus through Syria. We are therefore in the presence of a work of art with elements Mycenaean on the one hand and Oriental on the other, which would probably allow us to attribute it to the hand of a Cypriot artist. This would be in keeping with our hypothesis below concerning the identity of the God represented by the bronze statue.

Mr. Schaeffer informs me that Mr Dussaud recently put forward the hypothesis before your learned company that the ancient city of Enkomi would be none other than the Alasia of the tablets of Tell-el-Amarna. Now in these tablets which represent the correspondence of the king of Alasia with the Pharaoh, it is mention of the God Nergal, responsible for a plague which raged at Alasia. According to Mr. Schraeder (Die Keilinschriften und der Alte Testament 1902-3 p. 414 ) this Nergal does not would not be the Babylonian God of war and of the underworld not

Handwritten: but

65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain

Spotted a wrong reading? Write to us or use alexis@ancientcyprus.com