They warn: you that enter in this palace, and be peaceful. The god of storm, his wife Hepat, and their son, lions fangs protruding, the sphinx, the bird-men-scorpions, and still the eagles with bulging eyes await you, huge, black basalt, is in the Louvre. These sculptures fascinating rode past the guard to the gates of the royal cities of the old hittite empire.

Between the bronze age and the iron, on the peninsula, anatolian, and in the north of present-day Syria, Babylonia, and world of egypt, this civilization also terrible that mixed threw the last of his lights. It is unknown in France. Normal: before and after the First world War, the excavations have revealed have been largely confined to Germany.

First among the archaeologists, the baron Max von Oppenheim (1860-1946), that met Lawrence of Arabia, that met Agatha Christie and admired Samuel Beckett. By the missions that this son of banker financed personally, the course details the major site of Tell Halaf (north-east of Aleppo). We discover the monumental treasures patiently restored (they had been reduced to smithereens during a bombing in Berlin in 1943).

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These parts, loans outstanding of the Pergamonmuseum, are supplemented by a number of stelae, plaster casts or plates original called orthostates, chalky red or basalt dark on the original bases outside of the citadels. The fantastic bestiary is extended with bas-reliefs of chimeras, sun discs, winged scenes of cows nursing their little caravans of camels coming from the east. We distinguish even an ostrich.

For their part, the men are depicted more often as warriors. Soldiers in robe and curly beard, cut square. Archers armor and stays spiked curves. Drivers char routing their enemies, or chasing the lion with the stroke of the javelin. The women, equal to their husbands to banquets to funerals, are a refinement of all aristocratic. They take a lotus flower, symbol of future life. The scribes seated form, them, of the cubes as at the time of the pharaohs. They had to have a lot to do if we are to believe the quantity of tablets in clay and carved stones found. Sometimes their writing is wedge-shaped. Sometimes it is made of hieroglyphs louvites still not decrypted today.

In the vicinity of these records and other seals, seals, cylinder, imprints of seals as well as a piece of papyrus (the one in the Louvre mentioning the battle of Kadesh, which, in 1274 bc J.-C., between Muwatalli II to Rameses II), of jewelry are shining in all their gold in the dim light. Just as two magnificent horns libation in money. These rhytons are a deer and a bull with a naturalism perfect. In total, Vincent Blanchard, chief curator at the Louvre, brought together close to 300 objects. In addition, in the rotunda of the hall Napoleon, the lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet presents its decals by rubbing 32 of 59 orthostates remaining of the palace of king Kapara at Tell Halaf. He is the great-grandson of the secretary of von Oppenheim.

forgotten Realms. Of the hittite empire to the Arameans, at the Louvre Museum. Hall Napoléon (Ier). Tel.: 01.40.20.50.50. Opening hours: lun., game., sam., dim.de 9 h to 18 h. Sea. and fri. up to 21h 45. Until 12 August. Catalog: Lienart, 504 p., 45 € .

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the Louvre : a collage giant for 30 years of the pyramid – Look on Figaro Live