Jacques-Claude Courtois

Jacques-Claude Courtois (1931 to 1991) began assisting Claude F.A. Schaeffer at Enkomi in 1953 and later wrote up much of its finds¹⁰. In the autumn of 1963, a member of the CNRS, he was in charge of the archaeological study of the southern sector, where the sanctuary of the Ingot God was dated to the twelfth century BC and the bronze statue was found on 4 October¹⁴. He drafted the report on the 1965 campaign with Schaeffer's assent¹⁵. In 1970 he directed the exploration of post-Mycenaean houses south of the east-west street, which showed four levels and two earthquake destructions, and in 1971 he ran a stratigraphic sector^17,18. His study of the Ingot God sanctuary appeared in Schaeffer's Alasia I in 1971¹.

After Schaeffer's retirement Courtois published Alasia II (1981), on the tombs, and Alasia III (1984), on the objects of the stratified levels^2,3. He then wrote Enkomi et le Bronze Récent à Chypre (1986) with J. and E. Lagarce, and Les cylindres-sceaux d'Enkomi (1987) with J. M. Webb^5,6. Herscher singled out his studies of weights and measures; one is the appendix on the weights of Palaepaphos-Skales in Karageorghis's 1983 report, where he read two haematite pieces as weights on shekel standards^10,20. In 1981 he drove Olivier Masson and Maurice Sznycer round the archaeological sites of Cyprus for two weeks¹². He died in 1991¹⁰.