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Printed: MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS / FRENCH REPUBLIC / LIBERTY·EQUALITY·FRATERNITY
Your Company is aware of the results of the excavations conducted between 1932 and 1938 by the late Louis DELAPORTE at Arslan Tepe near Malatya. The discovery of a series of bas-reliefs from the door of a Hittite palace had immediately sparked a controversy over the date of these sculptures. From a stylistic point of view, they resembled [handwritten: out] at least in part, closely the bas-reliefs of the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya, which would indicate the 14th-13th centuries before our era.
It was this date that Delaporte himself had first proposed, before later abandoning it in favour of an attribution to the Neo-Hittite period, i.e. to the 9th 9th c. B.C. era.
As the controversy could not be settled by iconographic study and as, on the other hand, it was desirable to complete the excavation of the tepe interrupted during the war, the Excavations Commission established at the General Directorate of Cultural Relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entrusted me with a mission to examine the stratigraphy and the chronology of the tepe and to search for the remains of the palace that had could escaped the excavators [handwritten: until now].
Accompanied by the same team that assisted me at Enkomi, MM. Coche de la Ferté, Pironin and Forrer, archaeologist-assistant and architects, I devoted 45 days to the examination of the tepe during the months of August and September. Despite a stifling heat and a dust that [handwritten: red] burned the skin and tired our Muslim workmen already weakened by the traditional fast [handwritten: of the]
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain