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 cult paid to these deities that they finally adopted. The hypothesis that Syrian and Semitic missionaries could have come to Cyprus to convert them seems to me to have to be ruled out. No epigraphic source and no archaeological evidence permitfor the moment, to make such an assumption.

According to the Egyptian and Ugaritic texts, these sea peoples, who had come from coastal lands and islands situated to the North of Egypt, and to the West in relation to Syria; the texts give no further details. Were they originally from Greece, and should one consider them the first Achaean colonists of Cyprus, according to hypotheses recently advanced? This is not possible, considering the fact that, in the numerous archaeological sites of the XII-XIth c. explored in the coastal regions of Achaean Greece, no statuette or statue of male god comparable to those of Enkomi-Alasia has so far been found. By other characteristics too, we shall show elsewhere, the civilisation of the Peoples of the North and of the Sea settled in Cyprus in the 12th and 11th c. av.n.è. differs from that of the contemporary populations of Achaean Greece.

Where could they have come from, then? Was it possible to discover their origins? We shall answer these questions after having once again questioned, with my collaborators the soil of Enkomi-Alasia, where excavations resume in the spring 1971. In the meantime, I should like to appeal here to the testimony of the Old

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Testament. 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 from 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., were to possess naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean, then designated under the name Sea of the Philistines (Exode, XXIII, 31). Now, according to the same source, the Philistines, while being non-Semitic, and consequently uncircumcised - also attested, we shall show it 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 Astarté (I. Sam. V, 2-7, XXXI, 10). This biblical tradition thus supports the identification of the Semitic deities whose statuettes were found at Enkomi-Alasia and, conversely, these would provide a striking confirmation of the accuracy of the historical traditions of the Old Testament.