Etienne Marc Quatremère
Encyclopedia
Étienne Marc Quatremère was a French
Orientalist.
Born into a Jansenist
family, Étienne and his mother, who knew Latin, had to go into hiding in the countryside when his father, a clothing merchant made a member of the French nobility by king Louis XV of France
with the mention by the king to continue in his trading and shop keeping however, was executed in 1793 during the French Revolution
. Later he studied Arabic
under Silvestre de Sacy
, (1758 - 1838), a member of the French nobility since 1813 and the son of a public notary with Jewish roots, becoming later a rector
at the University of Paris
, in the School of Living Oriental Languages
.
Employed in 1807 in the manuscript department of the imperial library, he passed to the chair of Greek
in university of Rouen
in 1809, entered the Academy of Inscriptions
in 1815, taught Hebrew
and Aramaic
in the Collège de France
from 1819, and finally in 1838 became professor of Persian
in the School of Living Oriental Languages, on the death of Silvestre de Sacy
.
Quatremère's first work was Recherches ... sur la langue et la littérature de l'Egypte (1808), showing that the language of ancient Egypt
must be sought in Coptic
.
His Mémoires géographiques et historiques sur l'Égypte… sur quelques contrées voisines was published in 1811. This publication forced Jean-François Champollion
, the famous decoder of the Rosetta stone
, to publish, prematurely, an "Introduction" to his L'Égypte sous les pharaons. Since both works concern the Coptic names of Egyptian towns, and Champollion's was published later, Champollion was accused by some of plagiarism. In fact "neither he nor Quatremère had copied from one another, and very obvious differences of approach were apparent in their publications".
Quatremère edited and translated part of Al-Maqrizi
's , (1364 - 1442), Arabic History of the Mameluke Sultans (2 vols., 1837-41), "not because he had all that much interest in the history of Mamluk
Egypt, but rather because he was fascinated by the vocabulary of fifteen-century Arabic and particularly in those lexicographic nuggets that had not been defined in the standard of Arabic dictionaries".
He published among other works Mémoires sur les Nabatéens (1835); a translation of Rashid-al-Din Hamadani's, (1247 - 1318), Histoire des Mongols de la Perse (1836); Mémoire géographique et historique sur l'Egypte (1810); the text of Ibn Khaldun
's, (1332 - 1406), Prolegomena; and a vast number of useful memoirs in the Journal asiatique. His numerous reviews in the Journal des savants
should also be mentioned.
Quatremère made great lexicographic collections in Oriental languages, fragments of which appear in the notes to his various works. His manuscript material for Syriac
was utilized in Robert Payne Smith's Thesaurus; of the slips he collected for a projected Arabic
, Persian and Turkish
lexicon some account is given in the preface to Dozy
, Supplément aux dictionaires arabes. They are now in the Munich library.
A biographical notice by Barthélemy Sainte-Hilaire
is prefixed to Quatremère's Mélanges d'histoire et de philologie orientale (1861).
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Orientalist.
Born into a Jansenist
Jansenism
Jansenism was a Christian theological movement, primarily in France, that emphasized original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace, and predestination. The movement originated from the posthumously published work of the Dutch theologian Cornelius Otto Jansen, who died in 1638...
family, Étienne and his mother, who knew Latin, had to go into hiding in the countryside when his father, a clothing merchant made a member of the French nobility by king Louis XV of France
Louis XV of France
Louis XV was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1 September 1715 until his death. He succeeded his great-grandfather at the age of five, his first cousin Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, served as Regent of the kingdom until Louis's majority in 1723...
with the mention by the king to continue in his trading and shop keeping however, was executed in 1793 during the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
. Later he studied Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
under Silvestre de Sacy
Silvestre de Sacy
Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy , was a French linguist and orientalist. His son, Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, became a journalist.-Early life:...
, (1758 - 1838), a member of the French nobility since 1813 and the son of a public notary with Jewish roots, becoming later a rector
Rector
The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...
at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
, in the School of Living Oriental Languages
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales
The Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales is located in Paris, France. It was founded in 1795 after the French Revolution and is now one of the country's Grands établissements with a specialization in African, Asian, East European, Oceanian languages and civilisations...
.
Employed in 1807 in the manuscript department of the imperial library, he passed to the chair of Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
in university of Rouen
Rouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...
in 1809, entered the Academy of Inscriptions
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres is a French learned society devoted to the humanities, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France.-History:...
in 1815, taught Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
in the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
from 1819, and finally in 1838 became professor of Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
in the School of Living Oriental Languages, on the death of Silvestre de Sacy
Silvestre de Sacy
Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy , was a French linguist and orientalist. His son, Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, became a journalist.-Early life:...
.
Quatremère's first work was Recherches ... sur la langue et la littérature de l'Egypte (1808), showing that the language of ancient Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
must be sought in Coptic
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
.
His Mémoires géographiques et historiques sur l'Égypte… sur quelques contrées voisines was published in 1811. This publication forced Jean-François Champollion
Jean-François Champollion
Jean-François Champollion was a French classical scholar, philologist and orientalist, decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphs....
, the famous decoder of the Rosetta stone
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek...
, to publish, prematurely, an "Introduction" to his L'Égypte sous les pharaons. Since both works concern the Coptic names of Egyptian towns, and Champollion's was published later, Champollion was accused by some of plagiarism. In fact "neither he nor Quatremère had copied from one another, and very obvious differences of approach were apparent in their publications".
Quatremère edited and translated part of Al-Maqrizi
Al-Maqrizi
Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Ali ibn 'Abd al-Qadir ibn Muhammad al-Maqrizi ; Arabic: , was an Egyptian historian more commonly known as al-Maqrizi or Makrizi...
's , (1364 - 1442), Arabic History of the Mameluke Sultans (2 vols., 1837-41), "not because he had all that much interest in the history of Mamluk
Mamluk
A Mamluk was a soldier of slave origin, who were predominantly Cumans/Kipchaks The "mamluk phenomenon", as David Ayalon dubbed the creation of the specific warrior...
Egypt, but rather because he was fascinated by the vocabulary of fifteen-century Arabic and particularly in those lexicographic nuggets that had not been defined in the standard of Arabic dictionaries".
He published among other works Mémoires sur les Nabatéens (1835); a translation of Rashid-al-Din Hamadani's, (1247 - 1318), Histoire des Mongols de la Perse (1836); Mémoire géographique et historique sur l'Egypte (1810); the text of Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...
's, (1332 - 1406), Prolegomena; and a vast number of useful memoirs in the Journal asiatique. His numerous reviews in the Journal des savants
Journal des sçavans
The Journal des sçavans , founded by Denis de Sallo, was the earliest academic journal published in Europe, that from the beginning also carried a proportion of material that would not now be considered scientific, such as obituaries of famous men, church history, and legal reports...
should also be mentioned.
Quatremère made great lexicographic collections in Oriental languages, fragments of which appear in the notes to his various works. His manuscript material for Syriac
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
was utilized in Robert Payne Smith's Thesaurus; of the slips he collected for a projected Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Persian and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
lexicon some account is given in the preface to Dozy
Reinhart Dozy
Reinhart Pieter Anne Dozy was a Dutch scholar of French origin, who was born in Leiden...
, Supplément aux dictionaires arabes. They are now in the Munich library.
A biographical notice by Barthélemy Sainte-Hilaire
Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire
Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire was a French philosopher, journalist, statesman, and possible illegitimate son of Napoleon I of France.- Biography :...
is prefixed to Quatremère's Mélanges d'histoire et de philologie orientale (1861).