Abstract
THE subject chosen by Sir Leonard Woolley for his Huxley Memorial Lecture delivered on November 24 before the Royal Anthropological Institute was the role played by north-west Syria in the first and second millennia B.C. as a connecting link between the civilizations of the Near and Middle East. The region is denned as the area stretching from Lattakia on the present north Syrian coast northwards to the Anti-Taurus Range, and from the Mediterranean Sea to Aleppo. To the south and south-east lay “the commercial kingdoms of Syria and the Phoenician harbours”, with Egypt still farther to the south ; eastwards lay the homes of the Amorites and the Khurri, leading on to Nineveh. The Euphrates leads direct to Babylon or northeastwards to the region of Lake Van and the Uratu kingdom ; northwards beyond the mountain barriers lay Cappadocia and the Konia plain, leading to the Bosphorus or the Ionian coast ; westwards were Crete and Greece, with Cyprus-actually visible from the top of Mount Casius-as a stepping-stone. The nodal position of the region thus chosen is obvious.
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NORTH SYRIA AS A CULTURAL LINK IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. Nature 151, 144–145 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151144a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151144a0