Enkomi

About

Enkomi (also Mallia) is a 2nd millennium BC archaeological site on the eastern coast of Cyprus a short distance from the village of Enkomi. The site appears to currently be under disputed governance. A number of Cypro-Minoan Script inscriptions were found there including the longest known clay tablet. It has been suggested that this city was the Alashiya of the Amarna letters and in texts from several areas of the ancient Near East. The site is known for the hundreds of rich tombs that have been excavated and for exceptional metallurgic finds like the Ingot God and the Horned God.

The chronology of Cyprus during the later half of the 2nd millennium BC is defined as follows:

- Late Cypriot IIIA LC IIIA 1200–1100 BC

- Late Cypriot IIIB LC IIIB 1100–1050 BC Enkomi was settled in the Middle Bronze Age, near an inlet from the sea (now silted up). From about the 16th to 12th centuries BC, it was an important trading center for copper, which was smelted at the site, with strong cultural links to Ugarit on the facing coast of Syria.

The complicated and badly disturbed stratigraphy of the site has four major phases, with many subdivisions:

- Level A, Middle Bronze, a poorly represented preliminary stratum on bedrock. Pottery and scarabs found there led the excavators to date the level to 1900 to 1700 BC. The site then had a period of abandonment leaving a sterile stratum in the archaeological record ;

- Level I A, and B, at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. Dated by the excavators to have started slowly c. 1550 BC, reached property by c. 1500 BC, and been destroyed by an earthquake c. 1400 BC. Corresponds to the Late Cypriote I and II;

- Level II A, and B, with many subdivisions, covering the elaborate expansion of the 14th and 13th centuries and ending in a mass destruction c. 1220 BC ;

- Level III A, B, and C, with Mycenaean settlers, with a destructive attack, possibly related to the Sea Peoples in IIIA, culturally continuous with IIIB, ending in a destruction c. 1125 BC, and IIIC, a final, Mycenaean phase with dwindling population.

Following more than a decade of damage by looters attracted by the high quality of Enkomi's tomb gifts, Alessandro Palma di Cesnola drew the attention of archaeologists to the site after very briefly digging there in 1878. Most of the early excavations focused on the tomb area. The settlement remains were thought to be from the Byzantine period and a substantial portion were destroyed assuming they were unimportant. Alexander Stuart Murray worked there for the British Museum from 1895 to 1898. A total of 100 tombs were excavated. Under laws at the time, 2/3 of the finds went to the British Museum and the rest to the Cyprus Museum. The publication of excavation results was quite thin, mainly covering high status items. In 2003, the original excavation field notebook was published, detailing most of the individual tomb excavations. Unsuccessful trial excavations, also in the tomb area, were conducted in 1913 by the Cyprus Museum and in 1927 by R. Gunnis, though the latter did discover a hoard of bronzes. In 1930, a Swedish Cyprus Expedition team led by Einar Gjerstad excavated for two months in the tomb area, uncovering 22 "productive" tombs. Human remains were found seated and supine with robes fastened by gold pins, with grave goods of gold, silver, faience, and ivory. Some had diadems on their foreheads decorated with geometric ornaments, floral motifs or figures, and gold tin over their mouths. Ceramic and bronze vessels contained food and drink offerings. It has been suggested that one pottery shard was manufactured in Canaan, specifically in Ashdod. As they assumed that burial and settlement areas were separated the excavators used a pit digging technique that ended up destroying settlement remains:

"I made the worst kind of mistake a scholar can make: I was working on a pre-conceived idea. Since burial-grounds and settlements were topographically separated, as far as was known, during the whole Bronze Age in Cyprus, there was no reason to suppose that there were other habits in Enkomi"

In 1934, Claude Frédéric-Armand Schaeffer put in trial trenches, including about 200 soundings and partially excavating one building he named the Maison des Bronzes. Excavations were conducted between 1948 and 1973 by a joint expedition between Schaeffer for the French Expedition and Porphyrios Dikaios on behalf of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities. Early work determined that the site had been protected by a Cyclopean wall constructed of stone orthostat slabs up to 3.5 metres (11 ft) long. The wall enclosed an area of about 2.5 hectares. Cypriot excavations were conducted from 1848 until 1958 under Dikaios. French excavations, on behalf of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, proceeded under Schaeffer until 1970 at which point the expedition was led by Oliver Pelon. Excavation ended with the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the status of excavated objects in Mission storage are currently unknown.

Enkomi is enclosed by walls, with at least three gates at the north, west and south side located. Built on plain grounds, the city is supposed to have perpendicular streets: one Main Street from north to south and smaller ones from east to west, among which houses, sanctuaries and building complexes are located. Dikaios and Schaeffer's excavation focused on designated Area I and Area III (they are the only two areas which have been thoroughly excavated to the level of bedrock), which they treated as independent and not stratigraphically linked building entities. Besides, Dikaios tends to attribute the end of each occupation level to external invasion or massive destruction, such as the sea peoples invasion at the end of Bronze Age.

This area has no rich tombs. It has 12 rooms and 2 courts in its earliest stage, functioning as "an independent unit". In one particular room, infant burials from 2 different occupation periods are attested - the only room where intramural tombs are detected in this area. Infants are put into jars and then buried in a pit.

Most rooms in Area I could be interpreted as domestic structure, including vestibules, halls, and possibly rooms for storage, and even a corridor used as bathroom according to Dikaios.

Some archaeologists suppose Area III functions as "industrial facility, elite structure or fortification", especially in copper production. In contrast to Area I, Area III is oftener reused and rebuilt.

An extensive metallurgy industry was found at Enkomi. Numerous production facilities, raw materials, and finished products were excavated, including three copper oxhide ingots (one at the Cyprus Museum and one at Harvey Mudd College ). The most notable finished good finds were the "Ingot God", a statue wearing a horned conical hat and greaves, armed with shield and spear, and standing on a miniature hide-shaped ingot, and "Horned God".

The Horned God, measuring 0.55 metres (1.8 ft) in height, was found in a pit dug in the third phase of a very large tripartite ashlar building, built in the Late Cypriot III period (early 12th century BC) over earlier structures destroyed by an earthquake, also the dating of the statue. Large numbers of oxen skulls, stag antlers, animal bones, and miniature horns of gold sheet and other gold ornaments were found in the area in which the statue had originally stood, suggesting ritual activity. This level was also destroyed.

A decorated metal cup, the "Enkomi Cup" has been controversially claimed to use niello decoration, which would make it one of the earliest uses of this technique. However, controversy has continued since the 1960s as to whether the material used actually is niello.

The Sanctuary of the Ingot God was constructed around a beaten-earth floor with a burnt surface believed to be associated with the deposition of the bronze "Ingot God" figurine. The main hall included rubble walls and massive masonry pillars positioned perpendicular to the central axis of the structure.