In French Assyriology, the inter-war period was marked by a high degree of continuity compared to the years prior to 1914. This absence of a break was due firstand foremost to the fact that many of thesame people were involved after the war as before. At the EPHE, Scheil's lectures in the IVthSection and Fossey's in theVth Section continued. In 1934, Scheil had to step down: he would have liked Georges Contenau to take over, but René Labat was elected. In 1938, Fossey had the successor of his choice in Jean Nougayrol. During the same period, Fossey continued his lectures at the Collège de France. He set up a library there, which was inaugurated in 1937 and remains one of the world's richest repositories of Assyriological research. He also created a collective research tool in the form of a "lexicographical file". In 1939, he wrote: "The professor and two of his students, now directors of studies at the École des Hautes Études, Messrs Labat and Nougayrol, succeeded in making their public understand the need for teamwork. A tradition has been created. Now it's a question of continuing it and constantly recruiting new collaborators". Unfortunately, the Second World War brought this momentum to a halt. The period between the two world wars was one of the most prosperous for Assyriology in the Louvre's Department of Oriental Antiquities:the TCL series, which numbered three volumes in 1912, saw thepublication of seventeen volumesbetween 1920 and 1937, an average of one work per year.
While working conditions remained relatively stable in France, major changes affected archaeological fieldwork: the international context was very different from what it had been before the war, following the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Two zones of influence had to be clearly separated, that of the British in Iraq and that of the French in Syria and Lebanon. In Iraq, the British having taken over the Kiš site, Genouillac took over the Tello excavation from 1929 to 1931. He then handed over to André Parrot, who, at Thureau-Dangin's instigation, quickly moved to Larsa, where he was only able to carry out one campaign.The new law on antiquities put an end to the sharing of objects between Iraq and the excavators. Museums that had financed excavations decided to stop their work; the Anglo-American mission to Ur also came to a halt in 1933.
