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

Continued from scan 4

… in fragments among the animal bones (near a hundred skulls in total), including bovid skulls limited to the horns and the frontal bulls mostly, sheep and goats; shoulder blades of bulls with numerous incised parallel notches. In the western part of the hall, we will also menthe discovery of four balls inscribed with Cypro-Minoan signs of baked clay, all in situ on the main floor of the sanctuary with pottery of the wavy line type of Mycenaean III C:2.

In summary, in the present state of research, the history of the sanctuary at Enkomi is as follows: founded in the Late Bronze or Late Cypriot III (in English Late Cypriote II C) in the śé XIII e century BC, it was burnt and destroyed at the end of the Bronze Age (period of the Close Style) to be reconstructed and remodelled several times at the beginning of the Iron I period according to a fairly complex plan. Then, when the pottery known as Granary or Mycenaean III C:2 was in use, the sanctuary was enlarged towards the East by the construction of the large hall or rectangular courtyard, after suppression of most of the earlier subdivisions. On the other hand, the north and west wall benches and the small north-east corner room, where one found again the god with the bronze ingot. The sanctuary remained in use for some time in the Iron Age (post-Mycenaean) period, as attested by numerous finds such as the krater with an archer shooting at birds, the large pithos with a snake and an inscribed rim, the amphora and the vessels Proto-Geometric, as well as the two-headed centaurs.

The excavations at Enkomi in 1963 produced other notable discoveries. Mention may be made of a strange carefully built monument of baked bricks on solid foundations of two courses of large stones, with one course of stones every five courses of brick. As the publication in Enkomi-Alasia II by Mr W. Johnstone will show, this monument of oval plan offers an elevation in the shape of a beehive (beehive), with a door of ashlar with a monolith lintel on the north side. This building, whose floor is at 3 m 45 below the present surface of the site, was at first thought to be a Mycenaean potter's kiln. In reality it corresponds to a vast collective tomb, in use in the XIII e century and earlier, according to the abundant pottery recovered at the interior in small fragments (milk bowls, base-ring jugs, Mycenaean amphora