The teaching of Assyriology, from its beginnings to 1905

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This lecture addressed an aspect hitherto neglected by historiography: the transition from the generation of founders to the training of specialists who gradually took over from them. The aim was to examine the institutional conditions under which a new field of knowledge - Assyriology - developed.

The first place to mention is the Imperial Library'sÉcoledes Langues, where Jules Oppert became Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in 1857. It was here that he wrote some of the most important books of his career: a Sanskrit Grammar, published in 1859 and republished in 1864, then the two volumes of theScientific Expedition to Mesopotamia in 1858 and 1863, and finally his Elements of Assyrian Grammar in 1861, with a second edition in 1868. The Bibliothèque Impériale offered lectures not only in language, but also in archaeology: when Beulé died in 1874, the post fell to François Lenormant. But Lenormant's numerous Assyriological publications from 1873 to 1875 ceased altogether.

Assyriology's entry into the Collège de France was a gradual process. In 1861, Oppert was unsuccessful in his bid to succeedÉtienne Quatremère, and Renan took over. For lack of space at the Imperial Library, Oppert's lecture was transferred to the "Imperial College" in 1869. It became a "complementary lecture" there in 1873, and finally, a decree of February 1874 created the chair of "Assyrian philology and archaeology", to which Jules Oppert was immediately appointed; he was to hold it for just over thirty years, until his death in 1905 at theage of 80. Prior to 1901, all we have to go on are the posters tofind out what subjects he dealt with in his lectures: thanks to the Annuaire that was subsequently created, we have more information on his last five years of teaching. Oppert's subjects were very varied, and closely followed current scientific developments. The texts studied were written in Sumerian, Akkadian and Elamite; they included royal inscriptions, literary texts such as Gudea's Cylinder A and Gilgameš's epic, letters such as those discovered in Egypt at Tell el-Amarna, and legal texts such as those discovered in Susa - including the famous Code of Hammurabi.

At the Sorbonne, Assyriology was first taught in the form of "free lectures" given by the Rouen magistrate Joachim Ménant in 1869, which he published in 1873 under the title Leçons d'épigraphie assyrienne. The École Pratique des Hautes Études had been founded in 1868, but Assyriology was not taught there until 1872 by Stanislas Guyard, whose specialty was above all Arabic and Persian. Guyard directed the diploma on the Bavian inscription prepared by Henri Pognon, and it was Pognon who officially introduced the teaching of Assyrian at the EPHE, during his three-year lectureship from 1878-79 to 1880-81. In 1881, Arthur Amiaud became a lecturer and trained students such as Abbé Loisy and Father Scheil; he died in 1889 before reaching the age of forty. Meanwhile, Oppert had been appointed director of studies at the EPHE in 1883, but never taught there. It was not until 1895 that Amiaud was replaced, at which point Fr. Scheil became a lecturer, being promoted to deputy director of studies in 1902. It was Scheil who made the EPHE the French training center for Assyriology par excellence. In the Religious Sciences section, founded in 1886, a lecture on "Assyro-Babylonian religion" was given from 1891 to 1899 by a rather bland figure, Abbé Quentin, who was succeeded by Charles Fossey.

Two other Parisian establishments should be mentioned. Firstly, the École du Louvre, founded in 1882, where Assyriology was immediately taught by an unconventional figure, Eugène Ledrain, until his death in 1910. Then there's the Institut Catholique, where, from 1886 to 1912, Assyriology was taught successively by Abbés Alfred Loisy and François Martin.

The institutional diversity of the Parisian establishments listed above is noteworthy. Certainly, Assyriology found its place without too much difficulty within the framework of Orientalism as it existed in the ^19th century. It was seen as a scholarly discipline concerned above all with deciphering and editing texts. But it remained marginal from an academic point of view. It has to be said that France did not offer anything comparable in this respect to what existed in Germany, where university chairs were devoted to Assyriology from 1877 onwards in Leipzig, then Berlin, Munich, etc.