François Chabas

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François Chabas (born January 2, 1817 in Briançon , † May 17, 1882 in Versailles ) was a French Egyptologist .

life and work

François Chabas was born in Briançon in 1817, from where he moved to Chalon-sur-Saône in 1826 with his father, an old officer of Napoleon I. There he was trained for the merchant class and entered a trading house in Nantes in 1831 . In addition, he had self-taught considerable language skills (apart from several living languages, he understood Latin , Greek and Hebrew ) and expanded them further.

In 1848 Chabas returned to Chalon and initially operated trading businesses there. Then, inspired by anthropological work, he turned to the study of the ancient Egyptian language . The hieroglyphs he studied only after Champollion's grammar and released after a few years, his first work: D'une inscription you historique règne de Seti I (Chalon-sur-Saône in 1856), an important treatise on the exploitation of the gold mines by the ancient Egyptians which caught the attention of famous Egyptologists, even abroad.

Chabas also wrote Mémoire sur l'inscription d'Ibsamboul (1859), Le papyrus magique Harris (Chalon 1861) and Mélanges égyptologiques (3 series in 4 volumes, Châlon and Paris 1862–1873), a series of treatises in which through the analytical Method numerous facts important to the history, geography and chronology of ancient Egypt are ascertained. He then carefully researched all the documents relating to two important historical periods in Egypt: the conquest of the land by the Hyksos and the time of their expulsion; He also studied the authentic messages presented by the hieroglyphs to pinpoint the boundary between historical and prehistoric times. The following works refer to this:

  • Les pasteurs en Égypte , Amsterdam 1868
  • Études sur antiquité historique d'après les sources égyptiennes et les monuments réputés préhistoriques , Amsterdam 1872
  • Recherches pour servir à l'histoire de la XIX me dynastie et spécialement à celle des temps de l'Exode , Amsterdam 1873

Other Chabas releases include:

  • Recherches sur le nom egyptien de Thèbes , 1863
  • Les papyrus hiératiques de Berlin , 1864
  • Revue rétrospective à propos de la publication de la liste royale d ' Abydos , 1865
  • Voyage d'un Egyptien en Syrie, en Phénicie, en Palestine au quatorzième siècle avant notre ère , Paris 1866 (analysis of a papyrus from the British Museum )
  • L'inscription hiéroglyphique de Rosette, analysée et comparée à la version greque , Chalon 1867
  • Traduction des inscriptions de l'obélisque de la Place de la Concorde à Paris , 1868
  • Réponse à la critique , 1868 (sharp rejection of a criticism by Brugsch)

In addition, Chabas wrote numerous articles for specialist journals, including for the Revue archéologique , the journal for Egyptian language and antiquity and for the reports of the Amsterdam Academy. He was also preoccupied with prehistoric research, as evidenced by the works Une couche abondante de crinïdes fossiles de l'espèce Pentacrinus and Sur les silex de Volgu (1874). From 1876 to 1880 Chabas published the magazine: L'Égyptologie . His last work was Les libations chez les anciens Égyptiens (in the treatises of the Congrès provincial des orientalistes, St. Etienne, vol. 2).

Chabas was a member of several learned societies, especially the égyptien Institute and president of the Conseil départemental the department Saône-et-Loire to protect commercial and industrial interests. Stricken by a serious illness in recent years, he died on May 17, 1882 at the age of 65 in Versailles. His smaller essays were collected and edited by Gaston Maspero under the title Œuvres divers (with a biographical introduction, in the Bibliothèque égyptologique , Paris 1899 ff.).

literature

personal data
SURNAME Chabas, François
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Egyptologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1817
PLACE OF BIRTH at Briançon
DATE OF DEATH May 17, 1882
Place of death Versailles