Enkomi C.F.F Schaeffer Plates IV-VIIClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

328

After two tentative undertakings of discouraging results, one in 1913 by the Museum of Nicosia,[handwritten: 2 check mark] and the other in 1927 by R. Gunnis,[handwritten: 3 check mark] researches at Enkomi were recommenced in 1930 by a Swedish mission directed by E. Gjerstad.[handwritten: 4 check mark]

The English and Swedish archaeologists brought to light about 120 tombs of the Late Bronze Age and some of the Middle Bronze Age. Their content, often quite rich, is described with precision in their publications.

Concerning the secondary objective of their investigations—discovery of the undoubtedly important city on which the rich necropolis of Enkomi depended—the two expeditions had to score up a failure. Murray had noted in the terrain of the necropolis some vestiges of constructions. But he considered them later than the tombs and he attributed them to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries A.D. This opinion seems to have influenced the Swedish excavators. E. Sjöqvist in 1934, referring to Murray, declared these remains to be of the Byzantine epoch.[handwritten: 5 check mark] He added that they were disposed in two distinctly superimposed levels indicating habitation during two successive periods.

Such was the state of our information on the site of Enkomi when in 1932 the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres charged me with an archaeological mission to the island, with the goal of discovering some parallel material permitting control of the provenance and date of various objects, considered as imports from Cyprus, which were found in great profusion in the Near East, particularly during my excavations at Ras Shamra-Ugarit[handwritten: 6 check mark] on the Syrian coast.

Handwritten: red bracket marks flanking heading

Of 200 soundings made by me in 1934 on the site of Enkomi,[handwritten: 7 check mark] almost half of them revealed sections of walls or foundations. The pottery in contact with these constructions was generally of Middle or Late Bronze Age, more rarely of the beginning of the Iron Age. Very soon I became convinced that here is was a question of habitations and, in certain instances, workshops of bronze-smiths and other craftsmen, contemporary with the tombs.