Joseph de Guignes

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Joseph de Guignes (born October 19, 1721 in Pontoise , † March 19, 1800 in Paris ) was a French orientalist and sinologist .

life and work

Joseph de Guignes studied oriental languages under Étienne Fourmont in Paris from 1736 . After the death of his teacher, he was employed in his place in 1745 at the royal library as an oriental interpreter. In 1752 he became a member of the Royal Society in London , in 1754 a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Fine Sciences in Paris and in 1757, as successor to Augustin François Jault, Professor of the Syrian language at the Royal College . Thereupon he received the post of royal censor and in 1769 he was overseer of the antiquities collection in the Louvre and later a member of the commission of the Notices et extraits des manuscrits and that of the Journal des savants . The revolution caused him to lose his job and almost all of his fortune. He died in great poverty in Paris on March 19, 1800 at the age of 78.

Guignes pursued the study of the Chinese language with particular zeal . By comparing the Chinese characters with the scripts of ancient peoples of the West , he came up with the untenable hypothesis, which was contradicted by one of Fourmont's classmates, Michel-Ange-André Le Roux Deshauterayes , when it appeared, namely that the Chinese Characters are just a kind of monogram , formed from the Egyptian letters, and that China was once settled by an Egyptian colony. To be compared here are his Mémoire dans lequel on prouve que les Chinois sont une colonie égyptienne (Paris 1759) and Deshauterayes' Doutes sur la dissertation de M. de Guignes qui a pour titre: “Mémoire…” (Paris 1759).

Guignes' main work is the Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols, et des autres Tartares occidentaux… avant et depuis Jésus-Christ et jusqu'à présent (4 parts in 5 volumes, Paris 1756–1758). In this work, with great diligence but little criticism, he brought together rich materials from important, at the time mostly unknown Eastern sources. The countless research and nightly studies to write the enormous work led to the exhaustion of Guignes' powers. During this health crisis, his wife, née Hochereau de Gassonville, cared for him self-sacrificingly, as on other occasions. His work soon became an important reference work for historians interested in the history of Central Asia and the relationships between Western and Eastern history in ancient and modern times. Edward Gibbon made extensive use of it for his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89). A kind of forerunner of Guignes' main work is his Mémoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs (Paris 1748). Joseph Senkovski published a supplement to the first work under the title Supplément à l'histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs et des Mogols (Saint Petersburg 1824).

Other works by Guignes are Abrégé de la vie d'Étienne Fourmont, avec la notice de ses ouvrages (Paris 1747), Principes de composition typographique (An instruction for the typesetting of oriental scripts, Paris 1790), as well as the editions of several translations by French missionaries , so among others L'Éloge de la ville Moukden by Father Amyot (Paris 1770) and Shujing by Father Gaubil (Paris 1771). He also left numerous unprinted manuscripts, of which his son Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes gave a detailed list in the Voyage à Beijing , as well as many treatises and notes in the Journal des savants , the Mémoires de l'académie des inscriptions et belles -lettres , the Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la bibliothèque royale and other magazines.

Translations into German

  • General history of the Huns and Turks, the Mogols and other Occidental Tartarns, before and after the birth of Christ up to the present day: From the Chinese books and Oriental manuscripts of the Royal. Library composed in Paris . Translated from the French by Johann Carl Dähnert , Königl. Prof. and librarian in Greifswald. Röse, 4 volumes, 1769–1771. (Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols, et des autres Tartares occidentaux, & c. Avant et depuis Jesus-Christ jusqu'à présent: précédée d'une introduction contenant des tables chronol. & Historiques des princes qui ont regné dans l 'Asie; ouvrage tiré des livres chinois, & des manuscrits orientaux de la Bibliothèque du Roi).
  • Historical attempt on the origin of oriental writings in the Royal Library of Paris: on the books that were printed in Arabic, Syrian, Armenian in Paris and on the Greek writings of Franz I. Hildburghausen, 1790.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Guignes, Joseph de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Deguignes, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French orientalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1721
PLACE OF BIRTH Pontoise
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 1800
Place of death Paris