1929 : the discovery of Ugarit

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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 IVth^Sectionand Fossey's in the^VthSection 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.

The League of Nations having given France a mandate over Syria and Lebanon, a " Service archéologique près le Haut-Commissariat de France en Syrie et au Liban" was created and numerous excavations opened. Of particular note was the excavation at Neirab, near Aleppo, where, in 1926, Dominicans from the École Biblique de Jérusalem discovered a batch of Neo-Babylonian archives, which were published by P. Dhorme: this was the first time that tablets had emerged from Syrian soil. This was followed by a second excavation campaign at Mishrifeh, near Homs, in 1927, during which cuneiform tablets were discovered. Charles Virolleaud wasted no time in reporting them: theywere inventories of objects from the temple of the goddess Belet-ekallim, which enabled the site to be identified as that of ancient Qatna. Finally, in the spring of 1929, one of the major discoveries of the inter-war period was made: Claude Schaeffer's discovery of the city of Ugarit and a new cuneiform script at the Ras Shamra site. Virolleaud immediately setto work, pointing out that the new script was clearly alphabetic, but he would not comment on the nature of the language thus recorded. His efforts were joined by those of Hans Bauer and Fr. Dhorme: within a few months, deciphering was achieved and the language identified as belonging to the Semitic family. Subsequent excavations yielded numerous texts with literary and religious content: this revelation of Canaanite culture in the 13th^centuryBC was of prodigious interest to biblical scholars.