toured Europe in 1873, 1878, and 1889. Some changes became evident in
urban development, dress code, health care, photography, luxury goods and
painting. Several artists studied in Europe promoting a new Perso-European
style (Amanat 1998). A European-style institution, the Dar al-Funun, was
opened in Tehran in 1851, and in it art classes adopted the system which its
director, Abu’l Hasan (1814–66), had encountered during his study trip to
Italy in 1845–50. At his death in 1866 he was substituted by Ali Akbar
Muzayyin al-Dawleh, who had studied at the E ́cole de Beaux-Arts in Paris.
One of his best students was Kamal al-Mulk, who was sponsored to pursue his
training in Paris, Florence and Rome for three years (Ekhtiar 1998: 59–61).
The French archaeologists working in Iran at the end of the nineteenth
century were the Dieulafoy couple and de Morgan, who excavated in Susa, in
modern Iran. In 1881, Marcel (1844–1920) and Jane (1851–1916) 4 Dieulafoy
excavated the palace of the Achaemenian King Darius I in Susa (sixth century
bce). Years later Jacques de Morgan (1857–1924) went back to the site and,
after signing a treaty with the King MozaVereddin Shah, excavated there
between 1897 and 1902. Susa was mentioned in Neh. 1:1, Esther 1:2 and Dn
8:2. De Morgan found the Code of Hammurabi at Susa, which dated to the
eighteenth centurybce. This provided information about the oldest law code
known until then, remarkably similar in many elements to the Hebrew law
code, notably to some of the customs referred to in Genesis. Its links with the
Pentateuchal Mosaic Law were soon highlighted by the translators, theWrst
being Father Vincent Scheil (1858–1940), a Dominican, Assyriologist and
director of studies at the E ́cole pratique des hautes e ́tudes.
Around the mid 1880s Mesopotamian archaeology was a discipline being
developed in most major European countries (Larsen 1987: 98). From the last
decades of the century Britain and France’s involvement became supplemented
by that of Germany and the US. Germany’s interest in Mesopotamian archae-
ology crystallized in 1898 with the creation of the German Oriental Society, an
institution supported at the very highest level of German society (Larsen 1987:
99). Concerning German eVorts, Budge would say years later that:
many shrewd observers have remarked that Germany only began to excavate
seriously in those countries [Assyria and Babylonia] when she began to dream of
4 Jane Dieulafoy can be considered as one of theWrst women archaeologists. Another of
the pioneers who dealt with biblical archaeology was the British researcher Gertrude Bell
(1868–1926), who publishedThe Desert and the Sown(1907) with her observations of the
Middle East, andAThousand and One Churches(1909) about her work with Ramsay in Turkey.
In 1909 she visited the Hittite city of Carchemish (2 Chronicles 35:20, Jeremiah 46:2), found
Ukhaidir and went to Babylon and Najav, the holy Shi’ite city of pilgrimage. Her knowledge of
the area would lead to her recruitment by the British Intelligence during the First World War,
after which she would become the Honorary Director of Antiquities in Iraq and would establish
the Museum in Baghdad (Wallach 1997).
Biblical Archaeology 145