Letter from Megaw to Schaeffer about Dikaios's workArthur Hubert Stanley Megaw

[printed: GOVERNMENT [crest] OF CYPRUS]

Printed: DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES

Tel. No. :

Our Ref.: 90/48/2.

Your Ref. :

Nicosia, 27th July,1953.

Dear Dr. Schaeffer,

You enquired in your letter of 20th July,1953, if Dikaios had resumed work for the Department at Enkomi according to plan. He started last month and is continuing for another week. When he has returned to Nicosia he will prepare for the press the usual brief account of the campaign. Meanwhile I can only summarise very tentatively the position at my last visit. Work has been limited to the North wall area and although no spectacular results or finds have been obtained much that was previously obscure has been clarified. The construction of this sector of the present town wall in the thirteenth century seems to be confirmed, though it was strengthened in the twelfth. In the complex within the wall, which last year was seen to antedate it, we have gone down to the levels below the floors you saw last year. Happily in an extension at the east end we hit an area where these lower levels (though much disturbed) were not overlaid by any later reconstructions, and their character could be studied more easily. The walls are very massive but of rubble construction (no doubt these is upper parts were of mud brick). Their date is LC I, and there are even a few sherds of latest M.C. In this area although there is evidence of damage and repair, the LC II period is at present not well represented. The massive early constructions are found to extend under much of the complex to the West uncovered last year. To the east we remain blocked by the road but the indications are that except from the crucial part where the road crosses the town wall it does not conceal remains of importance. I hope however the next week will make it clearer whether we are dealing with an isolated early building, the partly disused and partly reconstructed remains of which were later enclosed by the town wall, or whether it formed part of the periphery of a sixteenth century town approximately equivalent in size and extent to that which was abandoned in the eleventh.

In the sanctuary area Dikaios does not feel that much more can usefully be done, at least not until he has gone through the material already recovered from the lower layers.

I look forward to seeing the bowl before I leave on the 5th August, but there is no news of it yet.

Bérard had a satisfactory dig at Ktima slightly complicated by Hellenistic tombs.

I hope you will have further successes at Ras Shamra in your forthcoming campaign and that your autumn campaign at Enkomi will be no less fruitful.

Yours sincerely,

Handwritten: signature

Dr. C.F.A.Schaeffer, D.A., D.Litt., Le Castel Blanc, 14, Rue Turgot, St. Germain-en-Laye .

[handwritten marginal note, left margin, rotated: Your letter of 20 July just received; if I am not mistaken (I cannot verify it at the moment) your existing permit will expire in your forthcoming season and so I can deal with your application for renewal on my return. A.H.S.M.]