Abstract
SIR LEONARD AND LADY WOOLLEY, it is announced, are leaving England for Syria, where the British Museum Expedition under Sir Leonard’s direction will resume excavations immediately at Tell Atchana in the Amk plain on the Orontes, North Syria. This site, as has been shown by the previous seasons’ excavations, has surpassed anticipation in its importance for the cultural relations of Asia and the eastern Mediterranean at an early date. The results which have been obtained already, as has recently been demonstrated by Sir Arthur Evans, when correlated with the information now accruing from the excavations of French archaeologists at the Syrian site of Ras Shamra, have already thrown light on chronological and other problems of the Minoan civilization of Crete, as well as indicated the extent of Cretan influence on Asianic culture. The work of the British Museum Expedition in the coming season will be devoted mainly to the further exploration and clearing of the palace, of which, as was pointed out by Sir Leonard Woolley in his recent lecture before the Royal Institution (see NATURE, January 29, p. 194), the architecture both in material and in style is as essentially Cretan as the painted pottery discovered on this site. It is hoped that additions to knowledge of political and social conditions of the time may accrue from further discoveries of the cuneiform tablets, from which it has already been established that the building is a royal palace dating to about 1600 B.C. Sir Leonard Woolley will be accompanied by Mr. P. W. Murray-Threepland, who will again act as his assistant, and by Mr. Ralph Lavers, acting as architect of the expedition, who has had previous experience of archaeological investigation at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt and in Crete.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Archæological Expedition to Syria. Nature 141, 279 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141279a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141279a0