Letter from Schaeffer to Madame Durroy (?) with the second report on Enkomi and Cyprus Mail press cuttingsClaude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer

Excavations at Enkomi, Famagusta, 30 September 1946.

Sir, the Secretary of the Excavations Commission Directorate of Cultural Relations, Paris

As I foresaw in my previous report, the promises of the workmen and the undertakings of their union to improve the rendement of work in exchange for a wage increase, have not been kept. I therefore suspended the excavations, dismissed everyone (except the specialised workmen of the Museum of Mrpsis). Then I summoned the committee with the general secretary of the workmen's union, where I set out to them the conditions under which I would resume work: abolition of team work by man and woman, minimum working hours 7 hours per day except 8 hours of attendance, dismissal without notice in case of absence or incapacity, wage daily 11 shillings, 12 for those who distinguish themselves. In case of non acceptance, I declared that I would stop the work definitively and leave. I then gave the press a note setting out the reasons which had led to the departure of the mission.

Visibly powerless, the mayor of Famagusta, the Labour members and the gen. secr. of the Communist party put pressure on the spokesmen of the workmen and made them accept my conditions.

Work resumed the next day with newly engaged staff and the elimination of older men. Discipline was instituted and that evening the men told me that the arrangement of work suited them. I now obtain a minimum of 6 1/2 hours per day of working time instead of 5 1/2 h., for a wage of 11 or 12 ani things instead of 15 shillings under the old system per couple (man 8, woman 7 sh.). Since then, work has progressed without difficulty, in an atmosphere of goodwill. The volume per man is 3 m3 per day instead of 1,7 m3 at the earlier rate.

In addition to the central quarter, three subsidiary quarters have been opened to explore the Cyclopean enclosure and the extension of the town. The latter proves to be very dense and covering a considerable extent. We have not yet been able to determine the limits to the West and North. Upto now four successive levels, corresponding to three superimposed towns, have been uncovered. The most recent level is post-Mycenaean, of the end of the 13th c. and of the 12th, with pottery of the sub-Mycenaean type and characteristic tools where iron is already fairly common. The funerary traditions, the архиarchitecture of the buildings are different compared with the previous level. Traces of fire attest that the change was accompanied by a general catastrophe. Certain quarters of the town were not reoccupied after the upheavals of the end of the 13th c.

Rich, well laid out, with special buildings provided with sanitary installations. The preceding town lived through the whole of the Late Bronze period, from the end of the 16th c. with a Mycenaean phase, then the 15th-13th c. with the well-developed Mycenaean and Cypriot pottery. A catastrophe accompanied by fires and characterised by walls overturned and displaced, and whose destruction ravaged the town towards the middle of the 13th c. The pottery is abundant and together with the other finds, bronzes, scarabs etc., they permit a precise dating. The chronological and stratigraphic parallelism with the Syro-Palestinian sites is striking. A place where one would say that one is clearing a quarter of Ras Shamra, with the difference, however, that the part of the town of Enkomi so far uncovered is much poorer in isolated finds. After the destruction of the Mycenaean town … continues