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Printed: MINISTÈRE DES AFFAIRES ÉTRANGÈRES / LIBERTÉ·ÉGALITÉ·FRATERNITÉ / RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE
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strongly stylised. Also met with at the site of the palace [handwritten: ?] trigagé by Delaporte, where it was mixed with the Hittite and post-Hittite remains; the date of this pottery has been misjudged and assigned to the Phrygian period. / Having met with it in situ in stratigraphically intact layers, and associated with limestone idols of the violin-shaped type so frequent for example at Hissar and Shah Tepe on the shore of the Caspian, it has been possible for us to re-establish its exact chronological position, which falls at the end of the 3rd millennium to the beginning of the second.
This is a facies so far unknown of the great family of painted pottery in use throughout the ancient Near East in the 3rd millennium. The stylistic kinship allows us to orient the comparisons towards Northern Syria, and Mesopotamia and Persia rather than towards central Anatolia. / Arslan Tepe is situated near a ford of the Upper Euphrates and in fact belongs culturally more to the civilisations of the Middle East than to the domain of the Hittite empire proper which it was incorporated into only at a relatively late period.
Pushed down to the heart of the mound, our soundings have revealed at about 10m depth a succession of prehistoric layers with entirely hittite [handwritten: lithic] tool kits, and an enclosure of remarkable dimensions in large masonry whose exact date is not yet established, however.
Handwritten: Déplacer
(We have observed that the mound of Arslan Tepe has been the scene of several devastations characterised by ruins with a confused plan, almost completely effaced. Some of these
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain