Recherches Anthropologiques dans L’Asie Occidentale. Missions Scientifiques en Transcaucasie Asie Mineure et Syrie 1890-1894.

Ernest Chantre (1843 - 1924) was a leading French anthropologist who did research in North Africa, Syria, and Central Asia. This is a report he delivered to the minister of Fine Arts and Education after a journey he made in winter 1880 to Syria and Central Asia. During that journey he took, with the help of the Commander Barry, ethnographic portraits of Kurds and Bedouins near Aleppo. These photographs are considered the earliest taken in the area.
Chantre discovered, during excavations at Bogazkoy, the Royal archive of the Hittite Kings. Accordingly he discovered the federal structure of the Hittite Empire, and the existence of eight different languages, which indicate the polyglot nature of the Hittite Empire. The Bogazkoy archive consists of nearly 25,000 cuneiform clay tablets. They are mostly on political, military, social, commercial, religious and artistic lives of the Hittites and the neighbouring nations.
Discusses Armenians, Azeris, Kurds and Turks. The plates in photogravure from photographs with portraits and some group shots, some lithograph plates with skull images.
Bibliographic reference: Hage-Chahine 901.