Letter from Schaeffer to Megaw on Dikaios's workClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

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o) the compound with no tombs connected with except isolated examples..

Here we are then: contrary to what I have found at Enkomi in the same strata, in the same building period with identical architecture already published and repubished and solidly based on similar finds in Ras Shamra, verified throughout several years of work and reverified, because I had to be sure in face of an hostile attitude of my swedish predecessors, Dikaios working for the first time in a site and a period of which he had no previous experience, accepting and confirming first my interpretation, overthrows it and says: there is no building with tombs of the LC II (=late Bronze Age) as I have proclaimed, but a cemetery, of late Bronze, with later put on top of it a building of early Iron Age. Dikaios can be sure of swedish approval and gratitude. But unfortunately he is wrong and if he will not see clear with the material already available the very next season at Enkomi will provide the discoveries to decide who is right and who is wrong.

P.174-175. No need to reject again this mistaken interpretation, we have said before where Dikaios went wrong, i.e. with the relationship of hearth of LC III to floor V in room XIV. But when he says here that together with vases of this hearth, the LC III (= early Iron) Philistine seal of rooms I-IX "serve as proof of the date of the compound and as reminder of the historical background against which the compound should be viewed", he simply violates the simplest historical facts, for the seal was found (see p.159, 159) in a fill between floor III and IV and has therefore no stratigraphical or chronological relationship with the original compound and floor V below. What concerns the historical background to which he refers, is just wishful thinking, to say the least of it.

P. 175-176. And what about the "similar evidence" that the erection of compound with floor V is LC III = early Iron from rooms VI and III of the South building? Of the fills referred to here as proofs, one is purely middle and late Bronze with no later sherds (room VI, see p. 148-49 of Dikaios report and my analyse above), the other (room III, see p. 142 and my analyse above) overwhelmingly Late Bronze, in which Dikaios selected 4 to label them Early Iron and which can perfectly be Late Bronze too as we have said and as the visual examination will probably confirm when I judge after the photos in his report.

P. 176. I am sorry to have to restate here another statement in Dikaios' report: He says "The main new evidence of the Enkomi pottery is the appearance of the Mycenean III C I wares, which apart from the Gurland amphora and Shida, were unknown in Cyprus before." If Dikaios would have looked through the extensive abord collection of our season of 1946, 1947 and 1948, previous to his campaign, preserved in his museum, he would have seen many pieces of this so-called Myc.III C.I ware: I have myself allowed Furmark in 1947 to copy some to him unknown designs of this ware found in the North building when he came to visit us. Probably Dikaios remembers also that Coche de la Ferte worked specially on this pottery when in Cyprus with me.