Unnumbered pageScan 1 of 6
Stamp: 27
Enkomi - Alasia, 6 October 1963.
Dear Colleagues, I have the pleasure of informing you through the good offices of my colleague and friend André Parrot that the French Archaeological Expedition began about a fortnight ago its XVIth campaign of research among the underground ruins of the ancient capital of the Bronze Age on the island of Cyprus. Here there still reigns an intense heat (39 to 42° C in the middle of the day) and not a drop of rain has fallen on this site of Alasia since last April. I am assisted by four French archaeologists and two foreign members, one English, the other Italian. In the central courtyard, 17 m. long, of a sanctuary of the final period of the city (beginning of the Iron Age, XIIth - XIth c. B.C.) of which the first elements found last year were presented to the Academy at its session of 31 May by my collaborator Mr J-C. Courtois (discovery of figurines in the form of centaurs [illegible] bicephalous), we uncovered in the middle of various pottery, some of it painted, placed on benches along the walls whitewashed with lime, of numerous skulls and horns of bull, deer and other animals both domestic and wild.
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain