The post-war revival

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The Second World War left its mark on French Assyriology in two ways. Firstly, with the retirement or death of the leading figures of the interwar period, such as Fossey, who stopped teaching at the Collège de France in 1939 and died in 1946, Scheil and Genouillac, who died in 1940, and Thureau-Dangin, who died in 1944. A generational shift took place, with the correlative appearance of many new names. The global conflict also led to a slowdown in scientific activity. The period that began in 1945 was therefore one of recovery, although not always as fast as those concerned would have wished.

The first part of the lecture focused on the lectures. At the Collège de France, no Assyriologist succeeded Fossey when he retired in 1939. It was not until 1945 that Édouard Dhorme waselected to the chair of Assyro-Babylonian Philology and Archaeology. He was succeeded in 1952 by René Labat, who proposed a new title for his chair: "Assyriologie". He also continued to lecture at the IVth^Sectionof the EPHE, until his death in 1974. He succeeded in creating a new department for Raymond Jestin, who taught Sumerian under this title from 1946 to 1973. Another department, entitled "Antiquités assyro-babyloniennes", was created in 1958 for Jean Bottéro, who held it until 1980. In the^{Ve Section}, Jean Nougayrol taught until his retirement in 1970, when Daniel Arnaud took over. The novelty of the period was the entry of Assyriology into the university with Paul Garelli, who became a lecturer at the Sorbonne in October 1967, then a full professor two years later, opting to join Paris-1.

This was followed by a presentation on the novelty of the era, when permanent researchers joined the CNRS. It was within this framework that women such as Elena Cassin, Yvonne Rosengarten and Denise Cocquerillat were finally able to become professional Assyriologists. Some researchers spent only a short time at the CNRS, ending their careers in higher education, as in the case of J. Bottéro and P. Garelli. Others, such as Fr. Steve, Maurice Lambert, Abbé Seux, Émile Szlechter, Maurice Birot, Douglas Kennedy and Jean-Pierre Grégoire , remained with the CNRS until retirement . In addition to individual researchers, "technical collaborators" were assigned individually to a professor to help with his or her research. This was the case for Jeanne-Marie Aynard with Nougayrol, Pablo Herrero with Labat, or Lucienne Laroche with Parrot, then Birot.

The lecture ended with the presentation of a number of publications and joint ventures. From 1946 onwards, scientific production gradually picked up again, starting with the Revue d'assyriologie. Here, too, the CNRS played animportant role, supporting many of the journals and subsidizing many of the books, whose diacritical typesetting was particularly costly at a time when the Imprimerie Nationale was withdrawing from all scientific endeavors. In the 1950s, there was a growing need for collective working tools. In the early 1950s, a group of Assyriologists got down to work, but the project did not come to fruition until many years later. The collective ventures that bore immediate fruit were those centred around discoveries made at archaeological sites where French teams were working, above all Ugarit and Mari.