Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency, Iran
May 4 2005
Jacques de Morgan; An Archaeologist Who Found Oil
A History of Archaeology in Iran (1)
The history of archaeological research in Iran may be divided into
two periods: before and after the Second World War. The early period
can in turn be subdivided into a first phase of mainly French activity
(ca. 1884-1931), and a second phase in which archaeology in Iran became
a multinational affair (1931-40). The modern period can be subdivided
into what might best be called the ~Squiet phase~T (1940-57) and the
~Sexplosive phase~T (1958-78).
Of course an interest in the antiquities of Iran predates 1884 and
the beginnings of systematic archaeological exploration. As early
as the 17th century, a number of European travelers reported with
surprise on the remarkable ancient monuments to be seen throughout
the countryside. The first scientific and scholarly attempt to deal
with one such monument, however, was Rawlinson~Rs recording of the
Bisotoun inscription (1836-41). While hardly a prehistoric project,
that effort, which resulted in the decipherment of Old Persian,
Elamite, and Akkadian cuneiform, led to a quickening of interest in
ancient western Asia and in the history and prehistory of Iran. The
next effort of note is the work of Flandin and Coste, who, between
1843 and 1854, recorded numerous standing monuments and sites in both
words and drawings. At the same time, the first actual excavations
were undertaken by Loftus, who recovered remains on the Apadana mound
at Susa (1851-53). (Iranica, p. 281)
With the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1978, the foreign archaeology
teams working around Iran went back home, leaving their projects
unfinished. In the year 2000, after a 25-year gap, Iran, eager to
revive its ancient sites and archaeological activities, once again
opened its doors to foreign experts.
The arrival of foreign experts reached its peak in the last Iranian
year (2004-2005), during which more than 50 teams from the United
States, Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, Australia, Japan, England,
Poland, etc. took part in excavations and studies of the Iranian
historical sites.
Cultural Heritage and Tourism New Agency intends to gradually
introduce the foreign archaeologists who have worked in Iran and
their achievements to help boost the Iranian archaeology.
The first of these articles is devoted to Jacques de Morgan, the French
archeologist and prehistorian, who had a major role in excavations
of Susa as the director of the Delegation en Perse at the time of
Naser-ed-Din Shah and Mozaffar-ed-din Shah of Qajar. Previous to that,
he had also succeeded to discover oil in Qasr-e Shirin in the western
mountains of Zagros.
Here is his biography with a focus on his activities in Iran quoted
from Iranica Encyclopedia:
Jacques Jean-Marie de Morgan [1857-1924]
De Morgan came from an exceptionally gifted family, in which
cultivation of humane learning was combined with scientific rigor.
His father, Eugeà ne, sometimes called “Baron” de Morgan, an engineer
specializing in mineral prospecting, was interested in entomology and
prehistory. He initiated his two sons, Henry, the elder, and Jacques,
into fieldwork, excavating with them the Campigny fault near Rouen,
which had lent its name to the first phase of the European neolithic.
Through his father Jacques became acquainted with Gabriel de
Mortillet, who was connected with the museum of national antiquities in
Saint-Germain and who, during investigations of Merovingian cemeteries,
taught him how to catalogue excavated objects. De Morgan wanted to be
a professional geologist like his father, and his personal fortune had
permitted him to travel and study abroad since his early youth. In
1879 he began to publish the results of his research, illustrated
with drawings that were remarkable for their finesse and documentary
precision. He received his final training at the École des Mines,
from which he was graduated in 1882. He was then appointed to head a
survey expedition to Scandinavia and subsequently conducted surveys
in Germany, Austria, Turkey, India, and as far away as the kingdom
of Perak in what is now West Malaysia. In this last area he took
up geography and ethnology, mastering the physical anthropology and
language of the Sakai blacks (de Morgan, 1886).
He went next to Russian Armenia, as manager of a copper mine at
Akhtala. At that time he believed that “the Caucasus is of special
interest in the study of the origins of metals; it is the easternmost
point from which prehistoric remains are known; older than Europe
and Greece, it still retains the traces of those civilizations that
were the cradle of our own”. His interest in the eastern origins of
civilization eventually led to neighboring Persia. The scientific
reports that he wrote upon his return from the Caucasus were published
in Paris in 1889-90. Immediately thereafter the French ministry of
public education entrusted him with his first official mission to
Persia. En route he paused to explore the necropolis at Telovan near
Tbilisi, then went on to Tehran, whence he paid visits to Mazandaran,
to Gilan, and farther west to Talesh in order to study dialects. From
Talesh he traveled south across Kurdistan and Luristan, combining
both geological and archeological investigations. He was the first
to recognize, at Qasr-e Shirin, the presence of oil in the vast fold
system of the Zagros. Although he had undertaken his mission on behalf
of the French government, he conducted this survey out of friendship
for the Persian government. At first, however, neither France nor
Persia was interested, and it was only in 1902 that exploitation began,
under the leadership of the Englishman William Knox D’Arcy.
De Morgan’s journey ended in Susiana, where he attempted to retrace
the routes of the Assyrian campaigns in Elam. He remained for a long
time at Susa, from which the expedition led by Marcel Dieulafoy had
departed six years earlier. In the vast field of ruins his curiosity
was aroused particularly by the high mound known as the “citadel,”
at the foot of which he recovered some flints and some very early
potsherds. This discovery must have been decisive in leading him to
reopen excavations at the site. Upon his return to Tehran he confided
in the French minister, Rene de Balloy, who was eager to obtain for
France a monopoly of archeological research in Persia. It took a little
time, however, before these efforts, under de Morgan’s guidance, were
successful. In the meantime he published his Mission scientifique en
Perse (5 parts comprising 10 vols., Paris, 1894-1905), including four
volumes of geological studies; two volumes of archeological studies
on tombs and other monuments that were still visible; one volume
devoted to Kurdish dialects and the languages of northern Persia;
one volume of Mandaean texts; and two volumes of geographical studies.
After his return to France, in November 1891, he planned, once he
had put his notes in order, to go back to Persia and to pursue his
studies in the southern and eastern provinces. Before he could do so,
however, he was invited to take over as acting director of the Egyptian
antiquities service; he remained in this interim appointment until
1897. De Morgan’s talents as an administrator and diplomat ensured his
favorable reception by foreign, especially English, Egyptologists. He
took up his post in 1892, and during the next five years he founded,
with Giuseppe Botti, the museum of Greco-Roman antiquities at
Alexandria; saved the temple of Kom Ombo from destruction; undertook
publication of a general catalogue of the monuments and inscriptions
of ancient Egypt; and, just before his departure, laid the cornerstone
for the Cairo museum of ancient Egyptian antiquities (de Morgan, 1895;
idem, 1896). His exploration of the pyramids of Dashur) brought to
light the royal treasures of the Middle Kingdom. But, as always,
his primary personal interest was in prehistory, and he can be
considered the father of prehistoric archeology in Egypt. He began
excavation of the extremely important Proto-Dynastic site of Nagada;
unfortunately, however, he entrusted the continuation of the work to
Émile Ame~Blineau, who proceeded with disastrous clumsiness.
In the meantime, in 1895 Naser-ed-Din Shah (1848-96) had signed a
treaty granting to France a monopoly of archeological exploration in
Persia. The Delegation en Perse was then established under the French
ministry of public education and fine arts, and its direction was
entrusted to de Morgan; he was chosen over Dieulafoy, who never forgave
him. De Morgan left Egypt in 1897 with the intention of creating a
“French archeological service” in Persia, in order “to investigate
these little-known regions from every scientific vantage point.” He
decided, however, to concentrate most of his own efforts at the site
of Susa, in order to further knowledge of Elamite civilization, as
opposed to that of the Achaemenid Persians, whom he considered lacking
in originality~Wa debatable judgment, to say the least~Wand to that
of the Medes, who had “never written their history,” a conclusion
that still stands.
In fact, from de Morgan’s own writings it seems clear that he was
less interested in Elamite history than in the overall prehistory
of the East. In 1902 he declared: “In the Nile valley I developed
the conviction that the first civilizations, from which the Egyptian
empire arose, came from Chaldea and that the Mesopotamian plains had
therefore been the cradle of human progress. Susa, because of its
very early date, provided the possibility of solving the greatest and
most important problem, that of our origins. This city, in my view,
belonged to that primordial world that had witnessed the discovery
of writing, the use of metals, the beginnings of art. If the great
problem of origins was to be solved one day, it was in Chaldea, and
especially at Susa, that it was necessary to seek the basic elements”
(1902, p. 16).
It was probably this primary interest in “origins,” rather than in
historical periods, that led de Morgan to decide, before he had even
begun to excavate, that he did not “have to deal with well-preserved
monuments that require careful delineation; the ruins were amorphous,
and the remains of superimposed walls showed traces of a series
of total destructions of the city. . . . It was thus necessary to
undertake a general exploration of the site, without taking into
account the natural strata, which cannot be recovered” (1900, pp.
50-51). He thus divided the enormous mound of the acropolis, which was
at that time 30-35 m high, into sections, each 5 m wide and 5 m deep,
which constituted the first “level”; below them similar trenches were
excavated, constituting the earliest “levels.” From the beginning
of his work, then, de Morgan, despite his exceptional cultivation
and dedication, condemned the architectural remains at Susa to total
destruction for all time; the excavation consisted simply of removing
an estimated 2,450,000 m3 of dirt, as in any public-works project. De
Morgan imposed his method, backed by considerable means, on a small
team, the most competent members of which were two former colleagues
from Egypt, Gustave Je~Bquier, in particular, and J. E. Gautier. For
work on texts he had called upon the Dominican father Vincent Scheil,
a renowned Assyriologist.
The team began work in December 1897, but it had to contend with
attacks by plunderers, who carried out their depredations without
restraint in a province that was mostly out of the control of the
central government. To ensure the safety of the expedition and its
finds, de Morgan built an enormous castle of medieval aspect on the
northernmost point of the acropolis. Wanting to obtain as soon as
possible an idea of the sequence of periods, he had dug at the southern
tip a series of five successive soundings, which revealed at the bottom
traces of an archaic civilization with fine ceramics and above it an
apparently derivative civilization with “crude” painted ceramics,
both from before the historical periods of Elam. His far too brief
summary report on this sounding was to be repeated almost without
change in the final excavation report published ten years later (1912).
Meanwhile work in the trenches was yielding impressive results,
as masterpieces of Babylonian civilization, captured by the
Elamites as spoils of war, began to appear. The victory stele of
Naram-Sin and a series of Kassite kudurrus (“boundary stones”) were
intermingled with masterpieces of Elamite metalwork and sculpture. In
1900 Mozaffar-ed-Din Shah (1896-1907) signed a supplementary treaty
granting to France all the antiquities discovered at Susa. And the
discoveries continued, crowned by the appearance of the stele bearing
the law code of Hammurabi. They were published, starting in 1900,
in Memoires de la Delegation en Perse (M.D.P.).
As work at Susa was carried on in the winter, Henry and Jacques de
Morgan used the summers to resume excavation of the late Bronze and
Iron Age cemeteries in Talesh. The publication (“Recherches au Talyche
persan,” in M.D.P. VIII, 1905, pp. 251-341) shows that, in the field of
prehistory, de Morgan was a good archeologist. At Susa, on the other
hand, the “investigations” had become tedious, and he often abandoned
direction of the work to his colleagues. In1903-04 the temples of
Inshushinak and Ninhursag of Susa were badly excavated; then, in
1906, virgin soil was reached in the necropolis, revealing clearly
both the beauty of the archaic ceramics and the presence of copper,
which indicated a date later than had been expected. Disappointed, de
Morgan had, in addition, to face the hostility of certain colleagues
and in France the very unjust accusation of laxity in the financial
management of the mission. He thus decided not to return to Susa
after 1907. His health shattered, he resigned from the mission in 1912.
He had previously entrusted to the Hellenist Edmond Pottier the
task of publishing the pottery from Susa, though the information
on periodization that he provided for Pottier was as false as it
was sketchy, basically limited to the succession of two “styles” of
pottery (“Étude historique et chronologiqe sur les vases peints de
l’acropole de Suse,” in M.D.P. XIII, Paris, 1912, pp. 27-103). On
the other hand, he devoted himself to synthetic publications,
primarily on prehistory but also on oriental numismatics. His major
works remain L’humanite prehistorique (Paris, 1921) and especially
the three-volume La prehistoire orientale (Paris, 1925-27), which
appeared posthumously. Salomon Reinach was charged with providing,
in Revue archeologique (1924), a detailed assessment of the career
and personality of Jacques de Morgan, who was a great archeologist
but made the mistake, characteristic of his time, of undertaking as
a prehistorian work on a historical site like Susa.
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