Recent French archaeological work in Syria and Jordan

Abstract

The French connection with the late antique and Byzantine archaeology of the Levant is now more than a century old. Between 1864 and 1877 Melchoir de Vogüé published his great Syrie Centrale:architecture civile et religieuse, a work which revealed for the first time the great richness of the archaeological record for the period. With its superb drawings and elegant plans it remains indispensable, especially since it describes some buildings, like the praetorium at Mismiyya, south of Damascus, which have long since disappeared. In these days when so much worthless nineteenth-century travel literature about the Middle East has been reprinted, it is sad that this masterpiece remains unavailable. The French Mandate for Syria and Lebanon from 1921 onwards gave a great impetus to these studies. Although most attention was given to great classical sites like Palmyra or Crusader ones like Crac des Chevaliers, late antiquity was not neglected and there was a growing interest in the deserted towns of the limestone hills of the north from J. Mattern, À travers les villes mortes de Haute Syre (Beirut 1944) and J. Lassus’ study of the ecclesiastical architecture, Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie (1947). This activity culminated in G. Tchalenko’s great work Les villages antiques de la Syrie du Nord (1958) which was based on field work done before 1939.