Twenty years later, the French vice-consul at Bassorah, Ernest de Sarzec, began to excavate the site of Tello in Southern Mesopotamia, and excavations continued under Captain Gaston Cros until 1909. These investigations confirmed the existence of Sumerian civilization, which philologists had assumed had existed but had been unable to prove. Despite its distinguished past record, on the eve of World War I France was no longer working in Mesopotamian archaeology. Immediately after the war foreign archaeological missions were able to begin to excavate once more because of favorable conditions created by the British mandate over Iraq. But France was hampered by its political responsibilities in Syria and therefore could only take a late and brief part in the excavations. In 1928, the excavation of Tello began again under the direction of Abbé Henri de Genouillac and andré parrot and continued until 1933. André Parrot led the investigation of the site of Larsa in 1933. New regulations about antiquities were passed and the clauses pertaining to the sharing of finds with their country of origin made excavations by foreigners less attractive. Consequently, France decided to concentrate on work in Syria. It was not until 1967, when the diplomatic circumstances were more propitious, that France and André Parrot resumed their research in Iraqi archaeology at Larsa. Ten years later, in an attempt to settle and develop the archaeological effort in Iraq, the Delégation Archéologique Française en Iraq (DAFIQ) was established. The new institution served as a framework within Iraq, with several teams of archaeologists, both French and Iraqi, cooperating at least until Iraq invaded Kuwait in the 1990s. Not only did France continue its investigations at Larsa, but it also took part in other excavations, especially in association with Iraq’s hydraulic plans, which necessitated the rescue of several sites in Upper-Mesopotamia.

In Syria and Lebanon the bulk of French archaeological research took place between the two world wars. However Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon experienced sporadic and occasionally brilliant French archaeological investigations before 1914. During this period, Félicien de Saulcy and Melchior de Voguë dedicated themselves to the study of biblical archaeology at sites on the Jordan River. Most of de Voguë’s work was on the monuments of Central Syria. Charles de Clermont-Ganneau was another great specialist in the archaeology of the monuments of Palestine, Phoenicia, and Syria. However the most outstanding scholar was Ernest Renan, who began the archaeological investigation of Phoenicia. The Emperor Napoleon III was very interested in all of the wondrous archaeological adventures he supported, and in 1861 established archaeological missions in Macedonia under the direction of Léon Heuzey and in Galatia under Georges Perrot.

In 1860, France sent a military force to Lebanon to help the Maronite Christians, whom the local Druse people were slaughtering. The military presence was seen by the emperor as both a protection of Maronites and a help for the establishment of another archaeological mission. He appointed Renan as official consul in Palestine and Syria. Even though Renan only investigated ground-level remains, his research is impressive—at Ruad, Tortose, Amrit, Byblos, Sidon, and Tyr. Renan gathered a considerable amount of information, and published it in the Mission de Phoénicie, between 1864 and 1874. Renan’s work stands as the foundation of Phoenician archaeology.

However, except for the Jesuit activities of the Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth on the eve of World War I, France did not participate in the archaeology of Syria and Lebanon. Palestinian studies existed only in the form of the Dominicans at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. After World War I, with changed circumstances, France tried to make its archaeological research profit by its newly acquired political status. Through the Service des Antiquités, created between 1919 and 1920, and under the Haut-Commissariat, successively directed by Joseph Chamonard, Charles Virolleaud, and Henri Seyrig, France, the mandated power in Syria and Lebanon, organized, developed, and controlled the whole archaeological research of this region and worked in permanent and close scientific cooperation with the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in Paris. René Dussaud, curator of the Département des Antiquités Orientales in