Unnumbered pageScan 3 of 6
-2-
Handwritten: here
directly on the natural rock laying only one meter beneath the present field level. Under its white coloured hard floor, in a slight depression of the underlying rock, was discovered the fragment of a tablet in baked clay covered by a long inscription of the still enigmatic Late Bronze Age script invented by the Alasia scribes. The text, arranged in two columns separated by a vertical line must [handwritten: )] have [handwritten: circled] according to the size of the tablet and the minute writing, told a long story. It invites comparison with the mythological, religious or "epopaeia" tablets of similar dimensions found in the oldphoenician city of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) by the same French Expedition.
It is becoming more and more evident that the Alasia scribes of the Late Bronze Age and Mycenaean period had much experience, derived probably from an already long tradition. Contrarily to the much smaller tablets known from Mycenaean Greece (Linear B) and Minoan Crete, which reveal so far only administrative or commercial writings and registres, the great Alasia tablets contain long texts certainly of historical importance. Their decipherment, the chances of which are increased by the discovery of the new tablets, is therefore [handwritten: a] waited with the greatest expectation.
At some distance north of the find spot of the nex tablet, further evidence of writing in Alasia has been found in form of small balls in baked clay probably used for playing, inscribed with a few signs which are however different from those used in the writing of the tablets. Some of these balles- more than fifty of them have been unearthed until now at Enkomi - belong certainly according to their stratigraphical position, to the post-Mycenaean Iron Age I level (12th. and beginning of 11th. c. B.C.), where inscribed tablets with long texts are so far absent.
Writing was therefore used until the very latest period of the city of Alasia, before its final disappearance, [handwritten: circled] probably, after another destructive earthquake followed by the abandonment of the city in favour of Salamis laying nearer to the seashore.
During the 19th. season of excavations at Alasia (Enkomi) by the French Expedition, in Autumn 1967, in a well next to the workshop of a bronzesmith and armourer, were found several bronze swords of European type, but made in Cyprus, and various bronze tools. In addition, a great [handwritten: number] mass of other objects [handwritten: were] discovered, the [handwritten: some] form of which [handwritten: were] unrecognizable because of the advanced oxidation in the damp mud in which they had been embedded at the bottom of the well during more than 3 000 years.
The Laboratory of the Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum, in Mainz, directed by Professor H.-J. Hundt, and famous for its methods for saving decaying antiquities, agreed to treat the Enkomi bronzes after having X-rayed them. The fragments of a cultchariot in bronze could thus be identified and put together again. The fourwheeled chariot is supporting a magnificent bull guided by an ox-drover to be sacrificed in the sanctuary, followed by a calf and a dog that is biting the latter in the tail to drive it on. The scene is admirably composed and shows the talents of an excellent sculptor. Cultchariots of this type are known from European Bronze Age sites but had not been found in the Near East. The discovery of the Late Bronze Age or very Early Iron Age (13th.-12th.c.B.C.) cultchariot at Enkomi has led to the iden-
Handwritten: .../
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain