Letter from Schaeffer to Dikaios on publications and the resumption of excavationsClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Handwritten: Nicosia

Handwritten: Study with the weights

DIRECTION GENERALE DES 19 August 1949. RELATIONS CULTURELLES

Secrétariat Général des Mr P. Dikaios, Curator of the Fouilles Museum of NICOSIA.

Dear friend,

On 10 June I acknowledged receipt of your two letters of 6 and 30 May concerning your latest work at Enkomi. My itinerant existence since then has prevented me from replying to you on your such interesting findings, and I shall not undertake it here since I shall have the pleasure of seeing you within 15 days and we will have the opportunity to discuss all of that.

I also thank you for your letter of 5 July addressed to Oxford in which you advise me to lodge in the house of the excavations built at Enkomi rather than in the monastery of St.Barnabas. I shall follow your advice.

Messrs Pironin and Forrer left this morning on board the SS. Ionia for Limassol where they are due to arrive probably on 27 August. Pironin is carrying the Enkomi treasure of 1947. To spare him some difficulties at the customs, I would be grateful if you would either alert or send there a representative of the antiquities service to receive them there. Pironin and Forrer are going to go directly to Nicosia to see you and here is their schedule: I asked Pironin to make me a good full-size drawing (development) of the Mycenaean hydria found by the Swedes and reproduced among others, in your museum guide pl.7, fig. 1. I know of no detailed drawing of this so important vase, about which I would like to speak again because it seems to me to have been dated too low by the Swedes. If on the other hand, you possess or have seen in a publication a drawing of this vase of the quality and kind of those reproduced by Sjöqvist in "Problems" fig. 19 to 21, a drawing I could use, it would be unnecessary for Pironin to make another. The 2nd task I have entrusted to him at your museum is to draw all the important vases and fragments of our 1946 and 1947 campaigns that have not yet been drawn, or that have been restored in your workshops. As soon as these drawings are done, Pironin and Forrer must set out for Enkomi to attend immediately to the setting up of our excavation house, where a minimum of furniture would be needed, tables, chairs, beds for the three of us, etc. I have placed funds at his disposal, but to reserve them as quickly as possible for the excavations proper, I would be grateful if you would advise Pironin on his purchases, possibly at Nicosia if they cannot be found at Famagusta, or

../..