1933 : the discovery of Mari

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The lecture began by introducing a number of scholars who made their debut in the 1930s: Raymond Jestin, and, for the first time, women Marguerite Rutten and Elena Cassin. Emphasis was then placed on the work of Thureau-Dangin, in particular his archaeological research in Syria, at Terqa, Arslan Tash and Tell Ahmar. Most of the lecture was devoted to the discovery of Mari and its archives. The excavation of this site was the result of a completely fortuitous event: the discovery inAugust 1933 of a statueby Bedouins who were burying one of their own on Tell Hariri. André Parrot was available at the time ,due to thestoppage of work at Larsa , so René Dussaud suggested he visit the site. Excavation began in December 1933; Parrot completed his fieldwork in 1974, having carried out twenty-one campaigns.

First, a temple dedicated to the goddess Ishtar was excavated; on January 23, 1934, the discovery of a statue of the ruler Lamgi-Mari (whose name is read today as Išqi-Mari) enabled the site to be identified with ancient Mari, whose importance was already known but whose location was still debated. As early as the second campaign, Parrot opened a second excavation site on the highest part of the tell, which proved to be the site of the palace.Thanks to its exceptional state of preservation, thismonument has proved crucial to our knowledge of Mesopotamian architecture. Its excavation also marked a milestone in the history of Assyriology: from 1934 to 1938 (^2nd to^5th campaigns), some 20,000 tablets and fragments were unearthed, constituting the remains of the archives of kings Yasmah-Addu and Zimri-Lim, covering the quarter-century prior to 1761 BC; this date corresponds to the entry of Hammu-rabi's troops from Babylon, in the year 32 of his reign, which was followed a few months later by the destruction of the palace and the city. The Antiquities Law of 1933 provided for the sharing of objects unearthed during excavations between the Syrianstateunder mandate and the head of mission. In this case, an exception was made. All the tablets were considered the property of the Syrianstate, but transported to Paris for study; they were to be returned as and when they were published.

The ensemble was therefore welcomed at the Louvre, but did not enter its collections. Thureau-Dangin stressed the importance of this corpus in a number of articles; however, due to other projects in progress, he did not wish to oversee its publication. Georges Dossin therefore tookcharge of the team of epigraphists responsible for publishing these thousands of texts; in January 1937 and again in September 1938, he made two presentations to the Académie, demonstrating the richness of the epistolary and economic archives. Publications began, but the war brought them to a halt. Likeall the objects in the Department of Oriental Antiquities, Mari's archives were moved to the Château de Cheverny;they were not made available again until 1947.

The epigraphic discoveries at Mari were numericallyfar more important than those at Ugarit. But before the Second World War, they did not attract as much attention, for several reasons. Firstly, epigraphers were not faced with the challenge of deciphering a new script; secondly, these texts didn't seem to have any impact on biblical studies - a fact that later proved not to be entirely true. Finally, if we exclude quotations, only 55 texts were published before the war: it was from 1950 onwards that a flood of publications began that has not ceased to this day.