Letter from Megaw to Schaeffer on the mission budgetArthur Hubert Stanley Megaw

Stamp: C.A. 1/35 or similar reference, handwritten, top right

Printed: DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES, CYPRUS.

Printed: Nicosia, 17th December, 1946.

Handwritten: Dr. C. Schaeffer

Dear Dr. Schaeffer,

I was very glad to hear that your 1947 budget for Enkomi has been approved, and that members of the Commission des Fouilles are favourably disposed to a proposal that our Department should participate in future work on this site. We shall look forward to hearing what decision is reached when the proposal is put forward officially.

I note your proposal to spend £300 of your 1947 budget on acquisition of the site. This may require some modification in the light of the figures given in my letter of 25th November. There is a great difference between the figure of £1234 (approx.) given in the official valuation and the rough estimate of £600 which I gave you in October. This is due to the unexpectedly high valuation now put on land in this area based on recent sales and to the inclusion of additional plots which your discovery of the town wall in the last days of the digging in October proved to lie within the town.

However, if you are able to set aside for this purpose an amount of the order of £500 from your annual budget it should be possible to acquire the whole site by the end of 1947, assuming that the Cyprus Government is prepared to pay an equal share of the cost.

With this in view and having in mind the possibility that the joint-expedition project may be approved in time for us to undertake a short season's digging in 1947, I am putting the whole matter before the Cyprus Government and am asking for funds to be included provisionally in the 1947 budget in accordance with the figures referred to above. I shall let you know in due course what results from these tentative decisions. If for any reason the joint-expedition cannot be put into operation in 1947, it should be possible, if funds have meanwhile been voted for our excavations, to expend at least part of the sum provided on acquisition of the site. On the other hand, if we are in a position to start joint operations in 1947 and it is not possible for us to spend the whole amount voted by the Cyprus Government on excavations, I expect you would agree that the balance should go towards the acquisition of the site.

I should like to have consulted you before taking this step, but as this is the last possible moment at which the Government can be approached in connection with the 1947 budget that is not practicable. I trust that you will approve this initiative on my part.

Meanwhile, finally, thank you for giving your message, I wish you well in all your plans for 1947. We all look forward to the joint-expedition in the autumn and hope that it may be settled in time for the best [illegible]. In this connection I should return to Cyprus in the spring, [illegible] probably be absent ... during the months of June [illegible].

Handwritten: signature

Printed: C.F.A. Schaeffer, Esq., ... 14th ...

Printed: Musée des Antiquités Nationales,

Printed: Château de St.-Germain-en-Laye,

Printed: France.