Ebla was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. Its remains constitute a tell located about 55 km (34 mi) southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh. Ebla was an important center throughout the 3rd millennium BC and in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. Its discovery proved the Levant was a center of ancient, centralized civilization equal to Egypt and Mesopotamia and ruled out the view that the latter two were the only important centers in the Near East during the Early Bronze Age. The first Eblaite kingdom has been described as the first recorded world power.
Ibbit-Lim was the earliest known ruler of the Third kingdom of Ebla, in modern Syria, reigning most likely shortly before 1950 BCE.
Jean Leclant was a renowned Egyptologist who was an Honorary Professor at the College of France, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters of the Institut de France, and Honorary Secretary of the International Association of Egyptologists.
André Chastel was a French art historian, author of an important work on the Italian Renaissance.
René Dussaud was a French Orientalist, archaeologist, and epigrapher. Among his major works are studies on the religion of the Hittites, the Hurrians, the Phoenicians and the Syriacs. He became curator of the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities at the Louvre Museum and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. One notable student was pioneering Jewish archaeologist Judith Marquet-Krause.
Tell Fray is a tell, or settlement mound, on the east bank of the Euphrates in Raqqa Governorate, northern Syria. The archaeological site takes its name from an ancient irrigation canal, hence 'Fray' or 'Little Euphrates'. It was part of a rescue excavation project for sites to be submerged by the creation of Lake Assad by the Tabqa Dam.
M'hamed Hassine Fantar is a professor of Ancient History of Archeology and History of Religion at Tunis University.
Khaled Mohamad al-Asaad was a Syrian archaeologist and the head of antiquities at the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He held this position for over forty years. Al-Asaad was publicly beheaded by the Islamic State on 18 August 2015, at the age of 83.
André Laronde was a French historian and archaeologist. He was a specialist of Greek settlements in Cyrenaica.
Maurice Sartre is a French historian, an Emeritus professor of ancient history at the François Rabelais University, a specialist in ancient Greek and Eastern Roman history, especially the Hellenized Middle East, from Alexander to Islamic conquests.
Robert Étienne was a 20th-century French historian of ancient Rome.
John Scheid is a French historian. A specialist of ancient Rome, he has been a professor at the Collège de France since 2001.
Laïla Nehmé is a Lebanese-French archaeologist. A specialist in the archaeology and epigraphy of the Ancient Near East, she is known for her research on Nabatean writings, the evolution of the Nabatean script into the Arabic, and archaeological excavations at Petra and Mada'in Saleh.
Georges Tate was a French historian and professor of ancient history and archaeology at the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, Doctor of Arts and correspondent of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. He was a specialist on the history of late antiquity and Early Middle Ages in Near East.
Jean-Pierre Verdet is a French astronomer, historian of astronomy and mathematician.
Véronique Schiltz was a French archaeologist, historian of art, and literary translator. She was a specialist in steppes art, in particular that of the Scythians, concentrating on the history and culture of steppe peoples between the first millennium BCE and the first millennium CE. She was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres from 2011, and an Officer of the Legion of Honour.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance is a 1996 illustrated biography of Leonardo da Vinci authored by the Italian art critic Alessandro Vezzosi, translated from Italian into French by Françoise Liffran, and published by Éditions Gallimard in the same year as the 293rd volume in their "Découvertes" collection. The book was adapted into a documentary film in 2001, by the title Léonard de Vinci.
Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet is a French historian and research director. She is a doctor in history, research director at the CNRS, at the Orient and Mediterranean laboratory and a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. In 2016, she was awarded the Irène-Joliot-Curie Prize for Woman Scientist of the Year.
Annie Sartre-Fauriat, born Annie Fauriat on 17 November 1947, is a French historian specialising in funerary archaeology and Greek and Latin epigraphy of the Greco-Roman Near East, as well as travel and travellers in the East in both the 19th and 20th centuries.
Idlib Museum is an archaeological museum located in the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria.
Order of Civil Merit (Excellent class) (2023)
