Letter from Schaeffer to Megaw about Forrer and objects found at Enkomi, including a bronze bowl under restorationClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Handwritten: 7.Feb 1950

Le Castel Blanc, 14 Rue Turgot, St.Germain-en-Laye, (Seine et Oise). 7th February 1950.

Dear Megaw,

I forgot in my last letter to ask you to be good enough to pay to W.Forrer now working in Enkomi the money he needs for board and lodging and himself. I asked my bank to send you a another fifty pounds to refill my deposit with you. [handwritten: illegible initials]

I hope all is going well with you and I would be greatful to you and Dikaios for any help you can give Forrer in order to speed his work on our Enkomi material.

The missing three little items of the Enkomi treasure of 1947 have been found among pieces set aside by the person who cleaned them. They were broken and had been put in a little box and forgotten.

I have shown the bronze bowl from Tomb II, covered on the outside by a very delicate gdd network, to two specialists in Paris who worked previously on my Ras Shamra material and whose experience is most reliable. They both agree that the operation of cleaning the bowl and fixing the delicate ornamentation would be extremely risky. They declined to guarantee the success of their attempt, and I therefore did not dare to ask them to undertake the cleaning and repairing without your approval. There are three solutions: 1) that you agree we risk the operation in Paris and we pay for it on a half share basis, until we know in whose lot the bowl will finally be attributed; 2) that we wait with the cleaning until I return this autumn and that the work should be done in your museum; 3) that it be done in the atelier of the British Museum. I would prefer the last solution, if possible. If you share my view, you could write to the British Ambassador in Paris telling him that I am bringing them this bowl to be safely transferred to the British Museum in the diplomatic bag. They have already done the same for me on the occasion of the purchase by the British Museum of an ivory mediaeval casket formerly in the collection of my father-in-law, Dr. Forrer. It is now exhibited in the British Museum. You could write a second letter to the present director of the British Museum, T.D.Kendrick asking him to undertake these restorations for us. As the bowl comes from the Franco-British expedition from Cyprus, they may have to charge us. I know him personally and shall write to him in the same sense.

Please remember me to Mrs. Megaw and give my best souvenirs to Dikaios with the enclosed note on stamp seals of early iron age.

Yours sincerely,

Handwritten: signature