Antiquities, 106, June 1953, pp. 103–105 and pl. IV: An Inscribed Tablet from Enkomi, CyprusPorphyrios Dikaios

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objects, cylinder seals, and the like,³ but no document of any length has ever been reported. The discovery of this fragmentary tablet shows first that this type of document in common was in Hither Asia⁴ was also known in Cyprus for longer texts and secondly that archives of the kind found in the East, in Crete and on the Greek mainland, may exist at Enkomi. It would be premature to enlarge on the importance and the significance of this discovery but Sir John I. Myres has kindly accepted to add the following note on the script used on the tablet. PORPHYRIOS DIKAIOS.

By the kindness of Dr Dikaios, and of Dr C.J. Gadd of the British Museum, I have been able kx to examine a plaster cast of the inscribed tablet from Enkomi. It is a fragment of a large rectangular tablet, retaining a part of the upright edge, about ten closely written lines, and about 20 letters in the longest lines. The writing is foursquare, closely packed, and originally very clear and regular. Unfortunately it has been so much sand-blasted that only very few signs can be recognized in some oblique lights, but not certainly. The ductus of the strokes resembles not the cuneiform stabbing, but the Minoan drawing or cutting; and the few signs which are at all clear seem to be Cypro-Minoan. In some lights the text looks like a tabular account, or inventory, with Minoan numerals.

Perhaps with clever lighting and much patience, it may be possible to recognize the script more certainly. It is any event an important addition to our knowledge, and an encouragement to further excavations of this complicated and much-devastated site, the general character of which is already apparent from Dr Schaeffer's Enkomi-Alasia, 1952. JOHN I. MYRES.

(3) J.F. Daniel, "Prolegomena to the Cypro-Minoan", in A.J.A., vol. 45, pp. 249 ff. A. Evans, Scripta Minoa, II (edited by Sir John I. Myres), p.75. Cl. Schaeffer, Enkomi-Alasia, pp. 391 ff. (4) The type of the tablet is nearer the Asiatic than the Cretan or Mycenaean ones. The dimensions of the fragment described here are: W. 9 5cm., ht. 5cm., th. 3cm.