A copper Merchant In Enkomi Today
A copper Merchant In Enkomi Today
As you tour Enkomi, near Famagusta in North Cyprus, you might imagine you are a copper merchant during the city’s heyday between 1300 and 1100 B.C. Your city is now only about 500 years old.
Let us imagine you are leading a donkey caravan laden with copper ingots. You have been to the copper mines in the interior of the island. Copper is smelted from its ore close to the mines, where there is a lot of wood to keep the smelting fires hot. Your ingots are shaped like oxhides and are famous throughout the eastern Mediterranean world.
You approach your walled city through the farmland that feeds it and are filled with civic pride as you near the massive walls. Your city is thoroughly up-to-date for its time, with gates set symmetrically and streets crossing at right angles. Not for you the ancient cities with their rabbit warren of
