Preliminary report on the excavations at Enkomi in 1963Jacques-Claude Courtois

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Handwritten: D-S-C.

Preliminary report on the excavations at Enkomi in 1963.

The French Archaeological Mission directed by Mr Professor Claude F.A. Schaeffer, member of the Institut, professor at the Collège de France, carried out its 17th campaign of excavations at Enkomi-Alasia, near Famagusta, in autumn 1963.

Particularly fruitful, this new campaign notably made it possible to complete the clearing of the vast sanctuary of the Cypriote Iron I (12th-11th centuries before our era – corresponding to the phases defined by authors: Mycenaean III C:2 / Late Cypriote III B and Cypro-Geometric I / Protogeometric) whose westernmost part had been uncovered during the two previous campaigns (1). It will be remembered that it had yielded two strange painted terracotta idols depicting bicephalous bull-calves. The large courtyard or hall with the hundreds and offerings of bulls, now entirely cleared, measures no less than 16 m 50 in east-west length by nearly 10 metres in north-south width. Built of rubble walls and mud-brick or pisé for the superstructures, this hall was divided into two parts of unequal width by a longitudinal dividing wall ending to the west at the foot of monolithic altar no. 2 (we were in fact fortunate to find also in place another monolithic altar no. 1), older – more Protogeometric – corresponding to the final phase of Mycenaean III C:1, as the associated pottery attests. The various beaten-earth floors recognised during the previous campaigns were again identified, especially along the west, south and east benches of the hall, partially covered, it seems.

Around the statuette of the god mentioned above, there were several vessels broken in place, and on the floor which she; we shall mention especially a terracotta subapodean krater, h. 25 cm, decorated with a continuous spiral in the tradition of the stylethe final Mycenaean of the Bronze Age, whose recent discoveries confirm the extraordinary survival on the island of Cyprus.

The same conservative character, and this purely autochthonous faith, is found in the form of the bowls with raised oval handle, wheel-made, in coarse earthenware more or less well fired, without any slip, with a grog-tempered fabric, and with a sometimes moulded foot, found on the north bench as well as at the feet of the bronze statue.

(1) Cf. Chronique des fouilles et découvertes archéologiques à Chypre en 1961 et en 1962. BCH, LXXXVI, 1962, p. 395 et BCH, LXXXVII, 1963, p. 570-572.