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

These bowls were used in cult ceremonies at the time when the Protogeometric style peculiar to Cyprus flourished, called 'Proto-White Painted Ware' according to the English terminology English, a style that recent finds at Enkomi will make it possible to know better. The fragments of a large krater whose rim diameter exceeds 60 cm, originally with four handles, were recovered in the debris of the very last period of the sanctuary, on either side of the north wall of the Hall, immediately west of the Cella of the ingot god. This krater, painted with a rich geometric decoration and a hunting scene with a highly schematised bow, is of a type still unique in Cyprus and strongly recalls the sub-Minoan and Protogeometric art of Crete.

Si l'on connaissait déjà un autel monolithe à la fin de la campagne 1962, on en ignorait encore les dimensions (hauteur totale (80 cm) et le fait qu'il avait pris la succession d'un autel antérieur quasi identique (hauteur (72) cm) situé à deux mètres à l'Ouest et au pied sud d'un gros bloc percé, solidement ancré dans le sous-sol du sanctuaire tardif, et qui servait clairement à attacher les bêtes au moment du sacrifice . Cet autel antérieur servit seulement à l'époque où la céramique du Mycénien final ou Mycénien III C:1 b/c était en vogue (XII e siècle). Il repose lui-même sur un sol de la fin de l'Age du Bronze, daté par la céramique mycénienne du type dit 'Rude Style', de la fin du XIII e siècle avant notre ère.

Thick layers of grey ash and more or less burnt pisé cover this floor of the end of the Bronze Age and attest to the violence of the fires that ravaged the early sanctuary as well as the rest of the town. It was on these ashes and levelled pisé wall remains that the large hall was rebuilt, rectangular and a little later, it seems, the series of wall benches so characteristic of the sanctuary of the early Iron I.

On the main floor of this last sanctuary, a beaten-earth floor at 1 m lo / 1 m 20 deep below the present surface, a large number of characteristic pottery was recovered, bowls of the so-called 'wavy line' type of the Granary style, associated with cream bucchero jugs with red slip and with jars of Canaanite or Palestinian type in red earth, handles sometimes inscribed with a sign. This type is common in Iron I (12th-11th c.) at most archaeological sites in Palestine (Tell Fara, Megiddo, Tell Qasile, etc;). At Enkomi, all these vessels lay

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