#french archaeology

Archaeology: A Secret History - BBC Four

Episode 2 “The Search for Civilisation”

Some of the very first archaeological photographs held in Les Archives Nationales-French National Archives. The pictures were taken in ancient Mesopotamia,Iraq, during a French expedition in the early 1850s.

Some of those photographs are very important because what we see on the photograph actually got lost on the way to France (in a river). All we have now is the photograph of some of these objects. Thanks to these images archaeologists still can work with this lost material.

French National Archives, Paris, France