Semitic Gods at Alasia in the 12th and 11th Centuries before the Common EraClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

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Syria-Palestine, since they had the opportunity to observe the worship offered to these deities whom they finally adopted. The hypothesis that Syrian and Semitic missionaries may have come to Cyprus to convert them seems to me to be ruled out. No epigraphic source and no archaeological indication allows, for the moment, such an assumption to be made.

Selon les textes égyptiens et ugaritiques, ces peuples marins seraient venus de pays côtiers et d'îles situés au Nord de l'Egypte, et à l'Ouest par rapport à la Syrie ; les textes ne donnent pas davantage de précisions. Etaient-ils originaires de Grèce, et doit-on les considérer comme les premiers colons achéens de Chypre, selon des hypothèses avancées récemment ? Ce n'est pas possible, consi-dérant le fait que, dans les nombreux sites archéologiques des XII-XIe s. explorés dans les régions côtières de la Grèce achéenne, aucune statuette ou statue de dieu mâle comparable à celles d'Enkomi-Alasia n'a jusqu'ici été retrouvée. Par d'autres caractéristiques aussi, nous le montrerons ailleurs, la civilisation des Peuples du Nord et de la Mer installés à Chypre aux XIIe et XIe s. av.n.è. se différencie de celle des populations contemporaines de la Grèce achéenne.

Whence could they have come, then? Is it possible to discover their origins? We shall answer these questions after having once more questioned, with my collaborators, the soil of Enkomi-Alasia, where the excavations will resume in the spring of 1971. In the meantime, I should like to call here on the testimony of the Old Testament. The Egyptian historiographers contemporary with the events report that, among the sea populations who occupied Cyprus at the beginning of the reign of Ramesses III, the Philistines were the most numerous and the most influential, which is moreover confirmed by certain finds at Enkomi-Alasia. According to the Bible, on the other hand, the Philistines, from the time of the Exodus, at the end of the 13th c., must have possessed naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean, then designated under the name of Sea of the Philistines (Exodus, XXIII, 31). Now, according to the same source, the Philistines, while being non-Semitic, and consequently uncircumcised - a fact also attested, we shall show by votive objects found at Enkomi-Alasia - , settled on the Palestinian coast at the same time as in Cyprus, worshipped Semitic deities including Dagan, Baal and the goddess Astarte (I. Sam. V, 2-7, XXXI, 10). This biblical tradition therefore supports the identification of the Semitic deities whose statuettes were found at Enkomi-Alasia and, conversely, these provide a striking confirmation of the accuracy of the historical traditions of the Old Testament.