Communication to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 6 August 1948Claude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Printed: MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, FRENCH REPUBLIC, PARIS

Stamp: none legible

Comm. to the Acad. des Inscr. & B.-L. / Fri. 6 August 1948.

In my communication of last summer I informed the Academy of the discovery by the Archaeological Mission French of the Mycenaean and Pre-Mycenaean town of Enkomi, to which is attached the well-known necropolis of the same name. Situated north of Famagusta, at the same latitude as the Greek Salamis, xxxxxx but a little further inland of the lands, this important site had been sought without success by two foreign missions. It is today localised geographically and in time. We have been able to identify in depth five très well-marked levels corresponding to as many urban installations which succeeded one another here in the course of the 3rd and 2nd millennia. | Their [handwritten: principal] periods of prosperity coincide with the Middle Egyptian Empire from the 20th to the 18th c., then after a period of distress which afflicted the whole island, with the period of the New Egyptian Empire, i.e. from the 16th c[handwritten: .] to the 13th century before our era.

This second period of prosperity had been interrupted around 1360 by a severe earthquake whose ravages are still visible among the ruins cleared by us. | The catastrophe was followed by intense activity of reconstruction et de réparation which attests the vitality of the city which then prospered until the end of the 13th century. It finally succumbed during the great upheaval which marks the end of the Bronze civilisation a little before 1200. The economic role of the city as an exporter of copper

[handwritten: la période] (marginal note at left margin, beside "Enfin" line)