Édouard Muller Ardaillon (4 May 1867 at Mazères in Ariège – 19 September 1926 at Oran in

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , religi ...

) was a French

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

, archaeologist and

geographer A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...

Career

After graduating from the Boys' Catholic College of Sainte-Marie in

Saint-André-de-Cubzac Saint-André-de-Cubzac (; oc, Sent Andreus de Cubzac) is a commune in the Gironde department Department may refer to: * Departmentalization, division of a larger organization into parts with specific responsibility Government and military *D ...

, he undertook a Bachelor of Arts. He was a scholar of the

lycée Louis-le-Grand The Lycée Louis-le-Grand (), also referred to simply as Louis-le-Grand or by its acronym LLG, is a public Lycée (French secondary school, also known as sixth form college) located on rue Saint-Jacques in central Paris. It was founded in the ...

from 1884 to 1887. In 1887, he enrolled in the

École Normale Supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education Secondary education or post-primary education covers two phases on the International Standard Classification of Education sca ...

where he achieved the

Agrégation In France, the ''agrégation'' () is a competitive examination for civil service in the French public education system. Candidates for the examination, or ''agrégatifs'', become ''agrégés'' once they are admitted to the position of ''profess ...

in 1890; he then joined the

École française d'Athènes The French School at Athens (french: École française d’Athènes, EfA; el, Γαλλική Σχολή Αθηνών ''Gallikí Scholí Athinón'') is one of the seventeen foreign archaeological institutes operating in Athens, Greece. History ...

(graduated 1891). In 1897, he defended his thesis on the mines of Laurion, the silver mines near

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List ...

, whose rich deposits and intense exploitation played a key role in the development of Athenian power in the classical period; it still remains a reference work on this subject. He also carried out excavations in the port of

Delos The island of Delos (; el, Δήλος ; Attic: , Doric: ), near Mykonos, near the centre of the Cyclades archipelago, is one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in Greece. The excavations in the island ar ...

and visited the

Cyclades The Cyclades (; el, Κυκλάδες, ) are an island group in the Aegean Sea, southeast of mainland Greece and a former administrative prefecture of Greece. They are one of the island groups which constitute the Aegean archipelago. The na ...

Ionia Ionia () was an ancient region on the western coast of Anatolia, to the south of present-day Izmir. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionian ...

Lydia Lydia ( Lydian: ‎𐤮𐤱𐤠𐤭𐤣𐤠, ''Śfarda''; Aramaic: ''Lydia''; el, Λυδία, ''Lȳdíā''; tr, Lidya) was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provin ...

and

Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the S ...

. In June 1894 he married a young Greek girl while he was in Athens, with whom he went on to have two children. From November 1896 he was in charge of a geography programme in the faculty of Arts at Lille, where he became chair of geography in 1899. Under his direction, the geography department of this university became important. His career received the encouragement and support of

Georges Perrot Georges Perrot (12 November 1832 – 30 June 1914) was a French archaeologist. He taught at the Sorbonne from 1875 and was director of the École Normale Supérieure from 1888 to 1902. In 1874 he was elected to the Academie des Inscriptions et ...

, director of l'École normale supérieure;

Théophile Homolle Jean Théophile Homolle (19 December 1848, Paris – 13 June 1925, Paris) was a French archaeologist and classical philologist. Biography From 1869 he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, receiving his agrégation for history in 1 ...

, Director of the

, and Charles Bayet, rector of Lille university. In 1905 he became rector of the

University of Besançon A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', whic ...

.Catherine Valenti, « Les membres de l'École française d'Athènes : étude d'une élite universitaire (1846-1992) », ''Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique'', 120-1, 1996, p.170 Finally, he was rector of the University of Algiers from 1908 until his death in 1926.

Selected publications

* 1893. "Rapport sur le tremblement de terre de Zante" (Report on the Zante Earthquake), '' Annales de géographie'' 2(7) 273-280
Online
* 1896. "Rapports sur les fouilles du port de Delos" '' Bulletin de correspondance hellénique'' 20 (1):428-445
Online
* 1897. "Répartition des Chrétiens et des Musulmans dans l'île de Crète" (Division of Christians and Muslims on the Island of Crete) ''Annales de Géographie'' 6(27): 255–257. * 1898. ''Les mines du Laurion dans l’Antiquité'' (The Mines of Laurion in Antiquity) Thesis. * 1901. "Les principes de la géographie moderne" (The Principles of Modern Geography) ''Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille'' 35, 269–90. * 1902. ''Carte archéologique de l’île de Délos'' (Archaeological Map of the Island of Delos).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ardaillon, Edouard French hellenists French geographers French archaeologists École Normale Supérieure alumni Lycée Louis-le-Grand alumni Academic staff of the University of Lille Nord de France Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Members of the French School at Athens People from Ariège (department) 1867 births 1926 deaths University of Algiers faculty