Enkomi: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition

In June and July 1930 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition sank more than 200 large pits in the necropolis of Enkomi and excavated 22 tombs, the richest of them Tomb 18, where a woman wore a gold diadem, mouthpiece, earrings and a necklace of double-shield gold beads^1,2.

Einar Gjerstad organised and directed all the Expedition's excavations, and Erik Sjöqvist was in charge of the archaeological work at Enkomi, which the preface lists among his sites for 1930¹. At Enkomi the work lay in the necropolis at the locality Ajios Jakovos, below the crag east of the village, and began in the north-west part of the burial ground, a white spot on Murray's field-map¹. The British Museum had dug there in 1896; the Cyprus Museum in 1913 and Gunnis in 1927 had found no tombs, and Schaeffer located the settlement in 1934^1,3.

Trial pits and tombs

The original plan was to drive a series of trial pits from near Murray's tomb 69 down to the road to Limnia. The digging then moved to Murray's tombs 86, 84 and 89 and north along the road, and experiments in the north-west area proved more successful: all the best tombs were found there^1,2. Most of the tombs revealed had been completely destroyed by what the report calls Byzantine houses, whose foundations of large ashlar blocks were sunk into tomb chambers, with some roofs used as latrines. The debris held fragments of coarse pottery and tiles and a few coins¹. Groundwater at tomb level hampered the work, as it had the British excavation, and a pump ran continuously while one chamber was dug¹.

The report dates the 22 tombs from Middle Cypriot III C to Late Cypriot III, most of them to Late Cypriot II, which it divides into A, B and C; Tombs 1, 5 and 9 were undatable^1,2. Tomb 12 belongs to Middle Cypriot III on both of its finds¹. Tomb 21 is Late Cypriot I, by a Red Slip jug and an early White Painted IV pot¹. Tomb 22 was an oval chimney-type tomb with a circular pit dromos, built at the beginning of Late Cypriot I and last used at the very beginning of Late Cypriot II; it held a tall male skeleton and a child's remains¹. Tomb 17 had three burial groups, the first in Late Cypriot I and the second at the beginning of Late Cypriot II; the third, a small group with a large amphora and a gold bowl, came slightly later, before the middle of Late Cypriot II¹.

Tomb 2 was a rock-cut tomb, flooded by groundwater and pumped throughout the excavation. The sieves gave two cylinders: one of white faience showing an enthroned deity and adorers, one of steatite with a standing man, bucrania and four signs¹. Gjerstad dated the tomb to Late Cypriot IA, and Steele reports 11 individuals with collective reburial⁴.

Tomb 18 had a dromos, a main chamber and two side-chambers. The dromos broke into the neighbouring Tomb 22 and was packed with stones to separate them; the report suggests that the roof collapse in Tomb 22 followed the cutting of the Tomb 18 dromos¹. Its finds included gold diadems, mouthpieces, finger-rings, ivory boxes and a bronze mirror; one diadem, on skull II, has double palmettes, and the necklace has ten large and eleven small beads, the large ones in the Mycenaean double-shield shape¹. The report places the second burial group at the peak of the necropolis's wealth, and Tomb 18 in Late Cypriot II C¹. Gjerstad later described the rich tombs, including gold-adorned dress, diadems, mouth-gold and a lion signet ring⁵.

Late Cypriot III marks a break in the report's account: earth-cut shaft tombs, sometimes in the mounds of old tombs, with few simple gifts, and Bucchero and Plain White Wheel-made wares in place of Levanto-Helladic¹. Tomb 15 was a shaft tomb with one female burial, three pots and an ivory box, dated to Late Cypriot III by its Bucchero Ware¹.

Reading the pits afterwards

Gjerstad later admitted that the Expedition had found the tombs but not the city, since he had assumed that burial grounds and settlements lay apart⁵. Crewe argues that the pit digging took place within the Late Cypriot settlement and that the Swedes accepted the earlier Byzantine reading of the foundations⁶. The area dug is a small part of the necropolis and shows no topographical pattern of dates².

The finds and the report

Finds were first taken to the central deposit at Nicosia and divided between the Cyprus Museum and the excavators, with a considerable number allotted to the Expedition; the allocation for Enkomi is not recorded¹. The skulls were kept at the Department of Anatomy, Lund; Fürst published the osteological material from the Expedition's excavations in 1933, and Fischer moved the remains to Gothenburg after 1982⁷. The necropolis chapter appeared in 1937 in the third volume of the Expedition's publication, The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Finds and Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, by Gjerstad, Lindros, Sjöqvist and Westholm, pp. 467–575¹.