Letter from Schaeffer to Karageorghis on accelerating the excavations at EnkomiClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Stamp: LE CASTEL BLANC / 14, RUE TURGOT / ST. GERMAIN-EN-LAYE

9 December 1969

Mr V. KARAGEORGHIS Director of Antiquities and Museums Museum of Nicosia Island of Cyprus

Dear Colleague,

I hope you have returned in good health from your new major tour of lectures, communications and meetings with your minister. I learnt yesterday at the Academy of the interest aroused by your communication on Kition.

Given your absence at the time of my departure from Cyprus, and the visit Mr Kazamias made in your company and that of his minister to Enkomi, I bade him farewell at his office in Nicosia on 17 November. On that occasion he returned to the problem of accelerated exploration, which he had raised with us at the Enkomi-Alasia excavations on 11 November last, in your presence. He wishes indeed that within a few years the essential part of the great site be uncovered, to be presented to the public, well enclosed and properly maintained. I agree that this would constitute a major centre of interest and would allow the tourists who flock to Salamis and the royal tombs to appreciate the importance of the high civilisation of Cyprus. During the interview, and after I had set out the scientific, technical and budgetary difficulties of exploring this vast site within a few years, Mr Kazamias told me that your Government could bear the costs of a larger workforce, but that your Department, given its numerous excavations and conservation works, could not take part in this undertaking on the scientific and technical level. I understand that, of course. On the other hand, I had to inform him that the French Archaeological Mission could not, in the immediate future, make a greater effort than that of recent years. It therefore seemed to me that the only solution able to answer his suggestion would be to seek a collaboration with one or more foreign missions, or the constitution of an international mission associated with the French Archaeological Mission, working in parallel with it during the two excavation seasons compatible with the climate of the site, one in March-April, the other in September-December.

Mr Kazamias replied to me that the project of an international mission which " would share in the work of exploration of the French Expedition" would correspond to his own views. He asked me to study such a project, and to inform him later of the possibilities.

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