Letter on the 1966 Enkomi excavations sent to Mr Karageorghis, with a photograph enclosedClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Handwritten: Report sent on request to Mr Karageorghis, 22.1.67 (?)

EXCAVATIONS at ENKOMI 1966

The French archaeological mission directed by Professor Claude F.A. Schaeffer conducted his XVIII th campaign of excavations on the site of Enkomi-Alasia from September to November 1966 (1).

Wells and Mycenaean tombs in use in the Northern quarter of the city. -

During the first part of the campaign, in September and at the beginning of October, the systematic emptying and clearing of a large number of wells, which are locally called "puits", i.e. all those soundings made by the archaeological mission previously exploring the site considered then as a Final Bronze necropolis, one noted [illegible] excavations and [illegible] of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. These tombs, found in numbers productive, yielded in particular the discovery of an abundant and often quite remarkable treasure [illegible] various material.

A certain number of excavated wells contained, during the end of the Mycenaean period and at the beginning of the so-called Cypriot I period (or Late Cypriot III or Pycomen III C 1 and III C 2 ), a whole series of small pottery vessels was recorded which could be reconstructed. Among the finds, the following may be mentioned here:

- bowls with deep basin and vessels with round body, very well fired and resonant whose technique is quite reminiscent of that of "egg-shell" ware (egg-shell ware) of the Cretan potters of the Middle Minoan, dating from the beginning in Cypro- Cypriot I (called elsewhere Mycenaean III C 1);

- a kerakos in greyish earth, decorated with an interesting type of painted decoration: fishbirds and stylised palms, a vase, of dodecametron style (Cos and Rhodes) unique in Cyprus and in the present state of our knowledge, of an already advanced phase du début du Chypriote Ier (XII e siècle avant J.-C.) ;

- several dozen bowls with deep basin in the style of the "Gradar" with decoration of wavy bands (wavy-line, Mycenaean III C 2), of excellent workmanship however local native; we of some (?) [illegible] and hollow paste with bon-tanté and ovoid body with a geometric decoration whose hierarchy relates to Cypriot productions of the Philistine Islands of Palestine. At the base of one of these pots was recovered the … continues