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

Assyriologist Assyriology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logy, -logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cune ...

, a renowned expert on the

Ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...

and director of the Assyriology Chair at the École pratique des hautes études. He died in Gif-sur-Yvette.

Biography

He participated with other colleagues committed to the left ( Elena Cassin,

Maxime Rodinson Maxime Rodinson (; 26 January 191523 May 2004) was a French historian and sociologist. Ideologically a Marxist, Rodinson was a prominent authority in oriental studies. He was the son of a Russian- Polish clothing trader and his wife, who both ...

, Maurice Godelier, Charles Malamoud, André-Georges Haudricourt, Jean-Paul Brisson, Jean Yoyotte) in a

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

think tank organised by

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

. 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'', focusing more on the study of

ancient Greece Ancient Greece () was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically r ...

. Between 1965 and 1967, together with Elena Cassin and Jean Vercoutter, he was the editor of the three volumes of the (Fischer World History) devoted to the Ancient East.

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 Collection (publishing), editorial collection of Book illustration, illustrated monographic books published by the Éditions Gallimard in Pocket edition, ...

» (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 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 publish ...

, 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. Penn State Press, 2010. .

References

External links

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

Le Monde (; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...

Awilum.com » In Memoriam, Jean Bottéro 1914-2007
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bottero, Jean People from Alpes-Maritimes 1914 births 2007 deaths French Assyriologists Academic staff of the École pratique des hautes études 20th-century French historians French historians of religion French biblical scholars French Dominicans French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists