Report 'A new sanctuary of the end of the Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age at Enkomi in Cyprus', annotated by SchaefferJacques-Claude Courtois and Claude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

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These bull's horns, sometimes found in a frontal position appeared to be surrounded by discontinuous patches of white lime and countless small pieces of charcoal, while the forehead and nape showed black stains due to the action of a fire. Now, the remains of a hearth still filled with grey ash and some sherds of various vessels, in the middle of the motte and un nalle. Not far from there, one will also note two earlier finds: a large subrounded pebble, which would be to be compared with the famous cult stone of the sanctuary of Ayia Irini and a block of dressed stone with a slightly concave top, in which one would be tempted to see the rudimentary altar where the bulls were sacrificed and incidentally the body from which a fine antler tine was recovered between two pieces of bovid horn.

How can one not think of the painted scenes on the walls of the famous Larnax (or sarcophagus) of Hagia Triada in Crete, scenes which illustrate so brilliantly the cult ceremonies in Late Minoan, in which the sacrifice of the bull held so great a place? or again the group in red lustrous pottery from Vounous, this time Cyprus, depicting a encolnite scene in which one can see two bulls awaiting the moment of the sacrifice, during a funerary ceremony (in Early Minoan). Still closer, both in time and in space, how can one not recall the similar discoveries of the Department of Antiquities at Amathus itself, in the temple of the great horned bronze god. There too, remains of offerings of bulls and sacrificed deer lay on the late floor of the sanctuary, at the same stratigraphic horizon, it seems, as in the new place of worship. [handwritten: Other prototypes are known...]

Alas, let us come to the most interesting finds made at the foot of the wall north of the hall of bull offerings: these are two terracottas representing a sort of centaur, with the body of a quadruped animal (bull or deer) very schematised, made on the potter's wheel, and with two heads anthropomorphic, added, as well as the legs. Of these two centaurs bicephalous, one is almost complete (it lacks only the hind legs), the other, very fragmentary (only the left head, two legs and some fragments of the cylindrical body survive) could be reconstituted graphically … continues