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

In particular, I need to be present when all floor V of Dikaios' dig and main building and the earlier ones will be removed, as well as when tombs beneath will be explored. For it is here, on floor V and in floor V and below, so far as interpreted in his report, that he made the fateful mistake, which not only endangers his whole work, but if uncorrected, would seem to annihilate the main results hitherto obtained by me at Enkomi and which I conquered as you know, against considerable opposition.

I cannot believe that Dikaios is sufficiently aware of what his conclusions of the mainbuildingdate with floor V really mean. Otherwise, I am sure he would have tried to explain me why he reversed most of his opinions of which he informed me in his letters written during the dig (see below) and which gave me confidence in his experience when he worked for the first time in my absence, in a field remote from his prehistoric diggings and in a stratigraphical context of particular complexity.

Analysis of Dikaios' report. - Room XIV. Floor V. - We best start from p. 107, room XIV, Here D. reports on the earliest floor resting on the rooke of the main building, a hearth formed of broken pottery placed for the purpose on the floor of the room. He says: "this pottery therefore represents the current wares at the time immediately following the erection of the building and is therefore of great chronological importance." As among the sherds of the hearth there were in addition to Late Bronze Age fragments, several of undoubtedly Chypriote Ter I, or LC III or Myc. III C period (p.108-9) he concludes p.110: "This group of early twelfth century pottery is therefore extremely valuable as an indication of the date of the main tripartite building, the erection of which can hardly be placedearlier than 1200 B.C."

Now as D. has reported in detail before on Pages 20, 21, 39, 40, 42, 43, 45, 47, 56, 59, 83, 98 and 102, that [illegible] annihilated through rearrangements after a severe catastrophe [illegible] the building to which the hearth placed on floor V do do not necessarily date the erection of the building, but date only its reuse, after the severe catastrophe which had partially destroyed it and after which rearrangements altering its original plan (p.47), a general clearing (p.46), even partial dismantling (p.45), reconstruction and reuse (p.47) had taken place.

Now, even if it would not have been obvious from the first instance, that the pottery included in a hearth placed on a floor of a destroyed and reused building gives the date not necessarily of the erection of this building, but perhaps, or more probably, of its secondary utilisation. Dikaios should have been also more careful not to conclude as long as he has not examined thoroughly the stratigraphical and ceramographical position in and under floor V of this building, which is even more decisive. He has felt this himself, when saying p.107:

Handwritten: belongs in