__NOTOC__ Joseph de Guignes (19 October 1721 – 19 March 1800) was a French orientalist,

sinologist Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the ex ...

and

Turkologist Turkology (or Turcology or Turkic studies) is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative con ...

born at

Pontoise Pontoise () is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the "new town" of Cergy-Pontoise. Administration Pontoise is the official ''préfecture'' (capital) of the Val-d'Oise ''dép ...

, the son of Jean Louis de Guignes and Françoise Vaillant. He died at

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. He succeeded

Étienne Fourmont Étienne Fourmont (23 June 1683 – 8 December 1745) was a French scholar and Orientalist who served as professor of Arabic at the Collège de France and published grammars on the Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese languages. Although Fourmont is r ...

at the Royal Library as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. His ''Mémoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs'', published in 1748, earned him admission to the

Royal Society of London The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

in 1752, and he became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754. There soon followed the five-volume work ''Histoire générale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux'' (1756–1758). In 1757, he was appointed to the chair of

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...

. Guignes originated the proposition that the

Huns The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...

who attacked the Roman Empire were the same people as the

Xiongnu The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 20 ...

mentioned in Chinese records. This view was popularised by his contemporary

Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, '' The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, i ...

in ''

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to th ...

''. The idea has been strenuously debated by central Asianists, including Maenchen-Helfen, Henning, Bailey, and Vaissière. Guignes maintained that the Chinese nation had originated in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...

ian colonization, an opinion to which, in spite of every refutation, he obstinately clung. He published a number of articles arguing that

Egyptian hieroglyphs Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1, ...

and Chinese characters were related, one deriving from the other. Although he was mistaken in that, he is recognized for proving that

cartouche In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oval with a line at one end tangent to it, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The first examples of the cartouche are associated with pharaohs at the end of the Third Dynasty, but the f ...

rings in Egyptian texts contained royal names, a thesis he developed from a hint previously made by J. J. Barthélemy.

Works

* 1748 –
Mémoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs
' * 1757 �
''Histoire generale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux,''
3 vols. Paris: Desaint & Saillant. * 1761 – ''Recherches sur les Navigations des Chinois du Cote de l'Amerique, et sur quelques Peuples situés a l'extremite orientale de l"asie.''Needham
p. 782.
/ref> * 1789 �
''An historical essay on the origin of the Oriented characters in the Royal printing-house, on the works which have been printed at Paris, in Arabic in Syriac, in Armenian, &c. and on the Greek characters of Francis I. commonly called the King's Greek.''
London:

Notes

References

* McClintock, John. (1891)
''Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature.''
New York: Harper & brothers.
OCLC 174522454
* Needham, Joseph, Ling Wang, Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, Gwei-Djen Lu, Dieter Kuhn. (1971)
''Science and civilisation in China.''
Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...

. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Guignes, Joseph De 1721 births 1800 deaths People from Pontoise French orientalists Fellows of the Royal Society Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres French sinologists

Works

See also

Notes

References