Zacharie Mayani (birth name Zecharia Solomonovich Klyuchevich, 1899, Melitopol, Russian Empire (currently Ukraine) – 1982, Eilat, Israel)

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

BnF Data
/ref> was a French writer and author of Russian Jewish descent.

Education and publications

He was educated at

Paris University The University of Paris (), known metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated with the ca ...

, where he received his doctorate in 1935. He was also a student in the École du Louvre. Pedagogue, journalist, specialist in antiquities, also author of a Hebrew textbook for Russian speakers and activist of the Zionist revisionist movement. His book ''Les Etrusques commencent a parler'' (''The Etruscans Begin to Speak'') put forth a thesis with exuberant reconstructions that the

Etruscan language Etruscan ( ) was the language of the Etruscan civilization in the ancient region of Etruria, in Etruria Padana and Etruria Campana in what is now Italy. Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually superseded by it. Around 13,000 Etruscan epigraph ...

of antiquity had links to the modern

Albanian language Albanian (Endonym and exonym, endonym: , , or ) is an Indo-European languages, Indo-European language and the only surviving representative of the Albanoid, Albanoid branch, which belongs to the Paleo-Balkan languages, Paleo-Balkan group. It ...

. This connection is dismissed by most scholars as "wildly speculative". Comparative linguistics have long demonstrated that Albanian is a unique branch of the

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...

, whereas the consensus among linguists and etruscologists is that Etruscan was a pre–Indo-European language. In ''Les Hyksos et le monde de la Bible'' (Paris: Payot, 1956) he also emphasized a connection between the

Hebrews The Hebrews (; ) were an ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic-speaking people. Historians mostly consider the Hebrews as synonymous with the Israelites, with the term "Hebrew" denoting an Israelite from the nomadic era, which pre ...

, the

Kenites According to the Hebrew Bible, the Kenites/Qenites ( or ; ) were a tribe in the ancient Levant. They settled in the towns and cities in the northeastern Negev in an area known as the "Negev of the Kenites" near Arad, Israel, Arad, and played an ...

and the Habiru. Zachari also supported that

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

ites went into

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

Illyria In classical and late antiquity, Illyria (; , ''Illyría'' or , ''Illyrís''; , ''Illyricum'') was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by numerous tribes of people collectively known as the Illyrians. The Ancient Gree ...

, and even Italy.

Bibliography

*''L'arbre sacré et le rite de l'alliance chez les anciens sémites'' (1935) *''Les Hyksos et le monde de la Bible'' (1956) *''Les Etrusques commencent a parler'', Collection Signes des Temps XI (1961)Paris, Arthaud, 1961; English translation by Patrick Evans, ''The Etruscans Begin to Speak'', Simon and Schuster, 1962, ASIN B004PB3RKK, ASIN B0013WGB8O, ASIN B0020CBVIG, ASIN B0028QD1AA, ASIN B000LEDICC, ASIN B001OLZGU8.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mayani, Zecharia 1890s births French non-fiction writers Year of death missing French male non-fiction writers Russian people of Jewish descent Emigrants from the Russian Empire to France