Italy is to help Middle Eastern countries recast their ancient history along lines no longer dominated by Western thinking.
Announcing a new archaeological institute to be set up in Damascus, Rome University's pre-eminent expert on the area, Paolo Matthiae, said the joint Italo-Syrian project would help a new generation of scholars re-appropriate their heritage.
Matthiae, famous worldwide for discovering the ancient city of Ebla in northern Syria in the 1960s, said there was "enormous diffidence, in my view perfectly well-founded, to the way the West has read the past of the region".
He pointed out, in particular, that Near East history is often viewed through a Biblical prism - a view that risks becoming blinkered in some cases.
"In America, for instance, they still talk about 'the Biblical lands," he said.
Matthiae said this historical reading was a "minefield", especially given the current tensions in the Middle East.
"We have to make sure these countries have confidence in the way the West investigates and interprets the past," he said, presenting plans for the institute.
The new school would aim to become a "centre of excellence" for studies in the field, incorporating all findings.
"Our Arab friends are fully entitled to have their extraordinarily glorious past seen from a standpoint that is not exclusively geared to the western world".
Matthiae, 66, is Professor of Archaeology and History of Art of the Ancient Near East at the University of Rome La Sapienza.
He has become a myth to many archaeologists for his historic discovery of Ebla, which was eventually revealed as a civilisation rivalling Egypt and the major cities of Mesopotamia.
The city, whose 3,000-year-old stone tablets contain the first reference to Jerusalem, is still giving up treasures 40 years after Matthiae found it.
Working closely with their Syrian colleagues, Matthiae's students recently made a string of dazzling finds at the ancient Syrian capital of Qatna including the oldest temple and palace in a kingdom that once dominated the caravan routes between Mesopotomia and the Near East.
