For so long the general public has seen culture and technology as incompatible. The root of this misunderstanding may well lie in the educational system which has delighted in making a distinction between the arts and the sciences. And yet, whether we plunge into the past, observe the present, or attempt to discern the future, we are constantly brought to using both science and culture, technology and society. Concrete collaboration can open not only the doors of knowledge, but also the path to economic development via the projects engendered.

Visitors to this exhibition will certainly notice the traces of the scientific input in this trip through Jordan, and the history they have been invited to share. Winding their way through time, stopping in front of the three statues, the two-headed bust, the masks from Ain Ghazal, they may notice the remarkable reconstitution and restoration by the Smithsonian Institute's conservation laboratory. These astounding technological feats allow us today, here in Paris, to admire for the first time these lime washed earthen objects dating 7000 years B.C.

Further down their path, visitors will see the objects unearthed only 10 years ago in ruins of the fortress at Mafraq by the Jerusalem based Ecole Biblique et Archéologique française. Then the copper scroll from the Dead Sea, discovered 45 years ago at Qumran by Henri de Contenson during an expedition organised by this school.

On one hand there are the rare pieces of Islamic furniture which bespeak of the Omayyad conquest and the beginnings of an art that had yet to make its mark, fine examples of an art subjected to the double influence of East and West. On the other hand, a message that has miraculously reached us after some two thousand years, telling us of the disappearance of a treasure that had been slowly and piously laid up, and prelude to the dispersion of an entire nation.

It is our hope that these pieces from the cultural heritage of Jordan, saved, consolidated and restored by the most recent scientific techniques, will convince the visitors that modern technology serves Mankind, both in our desire to discover the traces of our past, and in our need to construct our future.