Ernest Charles François Babelon (born 7 November 1854 in

Sarrey Sarrey () is a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France. See also *Communes of the Haute-Marne department The following is a list of the 426 communes in the French department of Haute-Marne. The communes cooperate in t ...

, Département

Haute-Marne Haute-Marne (; English: Upper Marne) is a department in the Grand Est region of Northeastern France. Named after the river Marne, its prefecture is Chaumont. In 2019, it had a population of 172,512.Numismatist A numismatist is a specialist in numismatics ("of coins"; from Late Latin ''numismatis'', genitive of ''numisma''). Numismatists include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholars who use coins and other currency in object-based research. Altho ...

and

classical archaeologist Classical archaeology is the archaeological investigation of the Mediterranean civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Nineteenth-century archaeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann were drawn to study the societies they had read about i ...

Education and career

Ernest Babelon trained from 1874 to 1878 to be an

archivist An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to Document, records and archives determined to have long-term value. The records maintained by an archivist c ...

at the

École Nationale des Chartes The École Nationale des Chartes (, literally National School of Charters) is a French ''grande école'' and a constituent college of Université PSL, specialising in the historical sciences. It was founded in 1821, and was located initially at ...

. He wrote his thesis on ''Les bourgeois du roi au Moyen Âge''. From 1878 he worked for the

Cabinet des Médailles The BnF Museum or Museum of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, formerly known as the Cabinet des Médailles, is a significant art and history museum in Paris. It displays collections of the ''Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques ...

. With

Salomon Reinach Salomon Reinach (29 August 1858 – 4 November 1932) was a French archaeologist, religious historian and was a major figure in the Franco-Jewish establishment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was vice president of the mos ...

he led excavations in

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

in 1883. In 1890 he was appointed Deputy to the Director of the Cabinet des Médailles, Henri Michel Lavoix; two years later he was himself appointed Director of the museum and he remained in that position for 32 years, until his death in 1924. His successor was Adolphe Dieudonné. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

he was responsible for sending the artistic treasures of the museum away for safekeeping and for gathering them back after the war. In 1902 he received an additional appointment as Lecturer for Numismatics and Glyptics, in 1908 he was appointed Professor with the chair for the ''Cours de numismatique antique et médiévale'' (course in ancient and medieval numismatics) at the

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment (''grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ne ...

. That same year he was also appointed President of the

Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions ( epig ...

. His son

Jean Babelon Jean Babelon (19 January 1889 – 20 April 1978) was a 20th-century French librarian, historian and numismatist. Biography A student of the École nationale des chartes, Jean Babelon wrote a thesis entitled ''La moralité de Bien Advisé et Mal ...

was also Director of the Cabinet des Médailles. Babelon devoted himself initially to

Medieval studies Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. Institutional development The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books ...

. His interest soon expanded to ancient numismatics, where he became a respected expert. In addition he was also a specialist in

Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...

ern languages, working closely with his friend

François Lenormant François Lenormant (17 January 1837 – 9 December 1883) was a 19th-century French Hellenist, Assyriologist and archaeologist. Biography Early life Lenormant's father, Charles Lenormant, distinguished as an archaeologist, numismatist and Egypt ...

. Babelon became a central figure in French archaeology. He sat on several important committees and was co-editor of the ''Gazette archéologique''. His numismatic work had two focuses: on the one hand he wrote numismatic catalogues and on the other he wrote syntheses of his individual studies in comprehensive works. His handbook ''Traité des monnaies grecques et romaines'' (Account of Greek and Roman Coinage) remained incomplete, he planned an account of all numismatic knowledge of his time based on the collection of

William Henry Waddington William Henry Waddington (11 December 182613 January 1894) was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister in 1879, and as an Ambassador of France. Early life and education Waddington was born at the Château of Saint-Rémy in Eure-et-Loi ...

. His corpus ''Recueil général des monnaies grecques d’Asie mineure'' (General Record of the Greek Coinage of Asia Minor), produced with

Théodore Reinach Théodore Reinach (3 July 186028 October 1928) was a French archaeologist, mathematician, lawyer, papyrologist, philologist, epigrapher, historian, numismatist, musicologist, professor, and politician. Academic career Educated at the Lycée Con ...

, in which he synthesised all the

mints A mint or breath mint is a food item often consumed as an after-meal refreshment or before business and social engagements to improve breath odor. Mints are commonly believed to soothe the stomach given their association with natural byproducts ...

Asia Minor Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...

also remains incomplete. To this day the work is important to scholarship because of its comprehensiveness. At the end of the First World War he intervened in the political discourse about the

Saargebiet The Territory of the Saar Basin (german: Saarbeckengebiet, ; french: Territoire du bassin de la Sarre) was a region of Germany occupied and governed by the United Kingdom and France from 1920 to 1935 under a League of Nations mandate. It had its ...

with a two volume work about Rome and the Germans called ''Le Rhin dans l'histoire.'' (The Rhine in History). He was one of the leaders of the Comité d’études which existed from 1917 to 1918 and advanced the argument for the Saar belonging to France. Following the work of

Paul Vidal de la Blache #REDIRECT Paul Vidal de La Blache #REDIRECT Paul Vidal de La Blache {{redirect category shell, {{R from move{{R from other capitalisation ...

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Education and career

Awards

Publications (selected)

Bibliography

External links