Jean Bottéro (30 August 1914 – 15 December 2007) was a French historian born in

Vallauris Vallauris (; oc, Valàuria) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France. It is located in the metropolitan area, and is today effectively an extension of the town of Antibes ...

. He was a major

Assyriologist Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , '' -logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southea ...

and a renowned expert on the

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, ...

. He died in

Gif-sur-Yvette Gif-sur-Yvette (, literally ''Gif on Yvette'') is a commune in south-western Ile de France, France. It is located from the center of Paris. Geography The town is crossed by and named after the river Yvette. The total area is and is green sp ...

Biography

He participated with other colleagues committed to the left (

Elena Cassin Elena Cassin, (1909 - June 2011), was an Italian-born French Assyriologist. Biography Elena Cassin studied the history of religions at the University of Rome and obtained her doctorate in 1933. She then went to Paris and attended Charles Fossey' ...

Maxime Rodinson Maxime Rodinson (26 January 1915 – 23 May 2004) was a French Marxist historian, sociologist and orientalist. He was the son of a Russian-Polish clothing trader and his wife, who both were murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp. After study ...

Maurice Godelier Maurice Godelier (born February 28, 1934) is a French anthropologist who works as a Director of Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. He is one of the most influential French anthropologists and is best known as one o ...

, Charles Malamoud,

André-Georges Haudricourt André-Georges Haudricourt (; 17 January 1911 – 20 August 1996) was a French botanist, anthropologist and linguist. Biography He grew up on his parents' farm, in a remote area of Picardy. From his early childhood, he was curious about technol ...

Jean-Paul Brisson Jean-Paul Brisson (11 September 1918 – 25 June 2006) was a French honorary professor of Latin language and civilisation at the Paris West University Nanterre La Défense. He devoted himself particularly to the social problems of antiquity, North ...

Jean Yoyotte Jean Yoyotte (4 August 1927 – 1 July 2009) was a French Egyptologist, Professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France and director of research at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE). Biography Born in 1927 at Lyon, he attended th ...

) in a

Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

think tank organised by

Jean-Pierre Vernant Jean-Pierre Vernant (; January 4, 1914 – January 9, 2007) was a French historian and anthropologist, specialist in ancient Greece. Influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss, Vernant developed a structuralist approach to Greek myth, tragedy, and ...

. This group took on an institutional form with the creation, in 1964, of the ''Centre des recherches comparées sur les sociétés anciennes'', which later became the ''Centre

Louis Gernet Louis Gernet (28 November 1882 – 29 January 1962) was a French philologist and sociologist. Life A student at the École Normale Supérieure (class of 1902), he received a licentiate in law and agrégation in grammar. In 1917, supported by ...

'', focusing more on the study of

ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of cult ...

. Between 1965 and 1967, together with

and

Jean Vercoutter Jean Vercoutter (20 January 1911 – 16 July 2000) was a French Egyptologist. One of the pioneers of archaeological research into Sudan from 1953, he was Director of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale from 1977 to 1981. Biography Bo ...

, he was the editor of the three volumes of the (Fischer World History) devoted to the

Ancient 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, Med ...

Works

*Collab. with Marie-Joseph Stève, '' Il était une fois la Mésopotamie'', collection «

Découvertes Gallimard (, ; in United Kingdom: ''New Horizons'', in United States: ''Abrams Discoveries'') is an editorial collection of illustrated monographic books published by the Éditions Gallimard in pocket format. The books are concise introductions to pa ...

» (nº 191), série Archéologie. Paris: Gallimard, 1993, reprint 2009. . *
Babylone : À l'aube de notre culture
', collection « Découvertes Gallimard » (nº 230), série Histoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1994. . *
Ancestor of the West: Writing, Reasoning, and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece
', Jean Bottéro, Clarisse Herrenschmidt, and

, with foreword by François Zabbal, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. University of Chicago Press, 2000. . *
The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia
', Jean Bottéro, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. U of Chicago Press, 2004. . *
Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
', Jean Bottéro, André Finet, Bertrand Lafont, Georges Roux, translated by Antonia Nevill.

JHU Press The Johns Hopkins University Press (also referred to as JHU Press or JHUP) is the publishing division of Johns Hopkins University. It was founded in 1878 and is the oldest continuously running university press in the United States. The press publi ...

, 2001. . *''Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia'', Jean Bottéro, translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. U of Chicago Press, 2001. *
Birth of God: The Bible and the Historian
', Jean Bottéro, translated by

Kees W. Bolle Cornelis Willem (Kees) Bolle (December 2, 1927 - October 14, 2012) was a Dutch historian who was Professor of the History of Religions at the University of California, Los Angeles. Biography Kees W. Bolle was born in Dordrecht, Netherlands on 2 ...

. Penn State Press, 2010. .

References

External links

Jean Bottero
on data.bnf.fr *
Obituary
' in

Le Monde ''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...

Awilum.com » In Memoriam, Jean Bottéro 1914-2007
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bottero, Jean People from Alpes-Maritimes 1914 births 2007 deaths French Assyriologists École pratique des hautes études faculty 20th-century French historians French historians of religion French biblical scholars French Dominicans Prix Roger Caillois recipients Assyriologists