Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin (né Jacques Duchesne, born 21 April 1910 in Jupille and died 8 February 2012 in

Liège Liège ( ; ; ; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the Liège Province, province of Liège, Belgium. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east o ...

) was a Belgian

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...

, and orientalist who was professor at the

University of Liège The University of Liège (), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium founded in 1817 and based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French (language), French. History The university was foun ...

and specialized in

ancient Iran The history of Iran (also known as Name of Iran, Persia) is intertwined with Greater Iran, which is a socio-cultural region encompassing all of the areas that have witnessed significant settlement or influence exerted by the Iranian peoples and ...

. Duchesne-Guillemin began his teaching career with the untimely death of his collaborator and mentor at the University of Liège, Auguste Bricteux, in 1937, becoming a professor in 1943 and a full professor in 1964. With the publication of his ''Zoroaster'' (a translation of the Gāthās of the

Avesta The Avesta (, Book Pahlavi: (), Persian language, Persian: ()) is the text corpus of Zoroastrian literature, religious literature of Zoroastrianism. All its texts are composed in the Avestan language and written in the Avestan alphabet. Mod ...

, consisting of seventeen hymns attributed to

Zoroaster Zarathushtra Spitama, more commonly known as Zoroaster or Zarathustra, was an Iranian peoples, Iranian religious reformer who challenged the tenets of the contemporary Ancient Iranian religion, becoming the spiritual founder of Zoroastrianism ...

) in 1948, Duchesne-Guillemin became one of the major figures in the study of the

Avestan Avestan ( ) is the liturgical language of Zoroastrianism. It belongs to the Iranian languages, Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family and was First language, originally spoken during the Avestan period, Old ...

language of ancient Iran. At different times in his career, he lectured at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, and the

University of California at Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the Ca ...

. His 1962 ''La Religion de l’Iran Ancien'' is still considered a masterpiece and the best scholarly introduction to

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism ( ), also called Mazdayasnā () or Beh-dīn (), is an Iranian religions, Iranian religion centred on the Avesta and the teachings of Zoroaster, Zarathushtra Spitama, who is more commonly referred to by the Greek translation, ...

despite the decades of subsequent developments in the scholarship of the religion. His international reputation culminated in his appointment, in 1973, as editor of the series ''Acta Iranica''. In 1974, Duchesne-Guillemin was awarded an honorary doctorate from the

University of Tehran The University of Tehran (UT) or Tehran University (, ) is a public collegiate university in Iran, and the oldest and most prominent Iranian university located in Tehran. Based on its historical, socio-cultural, and political pedigree, as well as ...

Publications

*''Ormazd et Ahriman, l'aventure dualiste dans l'antiquité'', PUF, 1953, 156 pp. *''La Religion de l'Iran ancien'', Paris, PUF, 1962, 411 pp. *''Le Croissant fertile : la découverte de l'Asie antérieure'', Paris, 1963. *"Islam et mazdéisme", in ''Mélanges Mass'', 1963, pp. 105-109. *''Zoroastre : étude critique, avec une traduction commentée des Gâthâ'', Paris, Robert Laffont, 1976, 265 pp. *"Pour l'étude de Hafiz", in ''Acta Iranica'', vol. XXI (1981), pp. 141-163. *''Dictionnaire des religions'', Paris, PUF (1984). *''Les Instruments de Musique dans L'Art Sassanide''. Leuven: Imprimerie Orientaliste, 1993, 130 pp.

References

1910 births 2012 deaths Academic staff of the University of Liège French philologists French orientalists Linguists of Indo-European languages Linguists from France French Iranologists Zoroastrian studies scholars 20th-century translators French men centenarians {{Belgium-academic-bio-stub

Publications

See also

References