The last census showed that the national territory was populated by sixty million people. If you now consider that there are a total of six Chairs of Assyriology in France, you will see that the proportion is one for every ten million inhabitants. If you also consider that these six professorships are shared by four people, and that the master's professorships are reduced to a couple, the race of French academic Assyriologists is nevertheless a little more numerous in proportion than that of the Pandas, of which there are only a few specimens for a billion and a half Chinese, sheltered in Zoos, admittedly less prestigious than the Collège de France..
Opening lecture