Enkomi: the Department of Antiquities excavations under Dikaios

Between 1948 and 1958 a Cypriot team at Enkomi found the bronze statuette of the Horned God and exposed an isolated fort of the very beginning of Late Cypriot I, later surrounded by the 13th-century town wall with its north gate^1,2. The team belonged to the Department of Antiquities and was led by Porphyrios Dikaios, curator of the Cyprus Museum^3,4. A. H. S. Megaw, as Director of Antiquities, had agreed the joint mission in November 1947⁴.

A joint mission with separate trenches

Dikaios's team worked at Enkomi beside the French excavations, but on its own and in separate areas⁵. The two teams dug at different times of the year with the same foremen and local workforce³. The French Archaeological Mission funded the Cypriot work³. Lindy Crewe writes that the French Mission set the size of the Cypriot excavation to suit its own research aims, so that Dikaios could not extend trenches to define buildings or settle some stratigraphic questions³. Crewe counts twelve seasons between 1948 and 1958, the last three, 1956 to 1958, being supplementary work done for the publication^3,4.

Dikaios's work centred on Area I, in the middle of the site, and Area III in the north, with a small Area II that remains unpublished apart from Tomb 3 and a few small finds³. Crewe describes his recording: phases were 'Levels', floors were numbered downward within each room, so that a higher floor number is earlier, and a context was normally a floor with the debris beneath it³. Later pits, Dikaios is quoted as saying, were dug a foot or two deeper than the intact deposit around them so that polluting fill could be recognised³.

The seasons, 1948 to 1955

The first season fell in 1948. Megaw reports that the bronze statue of the Horned God was found that year in a Late Cypriot III context in the ashlar building, whereas Schaeffer later put the find in the 1949 season^2,6. The statuette is 54.2 cm high and is in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia, as 1949/V-20/6⁷. In 1950 the team worked on a second ashlar building, whose pottery was mainly of the twelfth to early eleventh century, with Late Cypriot I structural remains beneath; an intact tomb with Mycenaean pottery of the 14th and 13th centuries lay under the street outside⁸.

The north-wall area was excavated in 1951 to 1953¹. In 1952 buildings predating the town wall were excavated down to floors of the end of Late Cypriot II or the start of Late Cypriot III, among them a court complex of rough masonry with sling bullets and bronze weapons. The wall itself was built in the 13th century and thickened early in the 12th with a tower. A fragment of a large baked-clay tablet inscribed on both sides, which Megaw called the first example found in Cyprus, came from the same work⁹. In the summer of 1953 the excavation was extended east, and the northern town wall was traced for 170 m. The earliest substantial building on the site, of fortress character and Late Cypriot I date, was uncovered, and copper-industry slag appeared from Late Cypriot II levels upwards. A second fragmentary tablet, in the Cypro-Minoan script, had been used to pave a hearth; Megaw describes the surviving part of its text as perfectly preserved¹⁰.

In 1954 the team dug down to rock in the north-wall area to clarify the early history of the buildings. The fortress-like walls belong to an isolated fort of the very beginning of Late Cypriot I, about 12 m by 64 m, with two entrances. A strip across the line of the former Enkomi-Styllos road revealed the north gate of the town¹. Meyers summarises the sequence in Area III as a long rectangular Late Cypriot I building, interpreted by Dikaios as a fortress, with copper working from its earliest floors; it was extended in Late Cypriot II, destroyed in the 14th century, and then surrounded by the 13th-century town wall^1,5. In 1955, in the 'temple complex', Dikaios dug below the floors of the ashlar building and recovered the history of an earlier U-shaped block of rooms and chamber tombs. In the north gate area the earliest floors of the fort gave a fragmentary Cypro-Minoan tablet dated by context to the early fifteenth century BC, and more evidence of copper working².

Work for the publication, 1956 to 1958

The last three seasons returned to places dug earlier. In 1956 the team worked in the North Gate area at the west end of the earlier section and found 13th-century copper workshops, then a rebuilding with white floors, a room Megaw says has the appearance of an 'audience chamber', and a silver-backed gold pendant embossed with a naked goddess of Syrian character¹¹. In 1957 it completed the excavation of about 30 wells and vothroi at the Sanctuary of the Horned God. One shaft, evidently a latrine, gave a sequence from a Mycenaean IIIB dish to bucchero, and the finds included an ox-skull, probably a ritual mask, a wooden comb and terracotta bull figurines¹². In 1958, near the North Gate, the ground below the copper-smelting workshops was examined and thirty-six pits and wells were explored; some of the shallow ones were apparently grain silos, and one well held a woman's skeleton at water level¹³.

Dating and criticism

The Ashlar Building, which Dikaios placed in Level IIIA, was later redated to late Late Cypriot IIC, so the upheaval he linked to Mycenaean invaders belongs earlier, according to Crewe, who cites Ionas 1984 and Negbi 1986³. Crewe denies that the site was founded in Middle Cypriot III, on the evidence from Dikaios's own areas, and dates the Level A material from Area III to Late Cypriot IA, though whether those deposits are undisturbed remains debatable³. Meyers states that Dikaios's and Schaeffer's stratigraphies cannot be precisely correlated⁵. Crewe finds that Dikaios eliminated over 50% of the assemblage from his publication of the ceramics, and that his tombs are the only ones at Enkomi published with associated stratification and contextual information³.

The finds and the archive

Over 5,500 trays of material, sorted by room number, are in the Larnaca District Museum stores; the two Areas are now mixed because room numbers were repeated. About a thousand selected sherds or groups, plus an unknown number of small finds, are in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia. Some material was sent to the Famagusta Museum, and its whereabouts are now unknown³. Crewe could not trace Dikaios's field notes and catalogue cards; original excavation labels survive on the trays, and museum inventory books exist³. Dikaios published the work as Enkomi: Excavations 1948–1958, in volumes dated 1969 and 1971^14,15. Crewe notes in 2007 that Enkomi lies in the north of the island, inaccessible to archaeologists³.