Fulgence Fresnel
Fulgence Fresnel | |
|---|---|
| Born | 16 April 1795 |
| Died | 30 November 1855 (aged 60) |
| Nationality | French |
| Occupation(s) | Assyriologist Orientalist Translator Diplomat |
| Relatives | Augustin-Jean Fresnel (brother) Léonor Mérimée (uncle) Prosper Mérimée (cousin) |
Fulgence Fresnel (/ˈfreɪn-, ˈfrɛn.ɛl, -əl/ FRAYN-, FREN-el, -əl or /freɪˈnɛl/ fray-NEL;[1] French: [fylʒɑ̃s fʁɛnɛl];[2] (15 April 1795 – 30 November 1855) was a French Orientalist. He was brother to the noted physicist Augustin Fresnel (1788–1827). Fresnel was an Orientalist scholar who led one of the first archaeological teams to excavate in Mesopotamia.
Education
[edit]As a young man, Fresnel studied sciences, literature, and languages, and translated a few works by Berzelius, stories by German novelist Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853) and fragments of a Chinese novel (Fragments chinois, 1822–23). He was a pupil of Sylvestre de Sacy (1768–1838) in Paris, and in 1826 he undertook studies of the language and history of the Arabs at Maronite College in Rome.
Career
[edit]
Fresnel was appointed French consular agent in Cairo in 1837, and then consul in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. In Arabia, he became a proficient speaker of local dialects, and during this time period, he came into contact with descendants of the Himyarites. Fresnel is credited as the first European to provide a translation of ancient Himyarite inscriptions. He also wrote the first description of the Shehri language.[3] He was a prominent member of the Societe Asiatique and considered one of France's leading Arabists of the period.[4] He was named chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1849.[5]
In 1851, he was put in charge of the French scientific expedition to Mesopotamia, where he was accompanied by assyriologist Jules Oppert, the architect, Felix Thomas and expedition administrator Edouard Perreymond.[4][5] The expedition suffered misfortunes from ill health, uncertainties due to the Arab unrest in the Ottoman Empire and ultimately critical financial issues.[6] Nevertheless, it has been argued that the expedition discovered the true location of ancient Babylon.[5][7][8]
Much of the mission's work[9] was subsequently lost in May 1855 when the rafts transporting it were attacked and sunk on the river Tigris.[10][11] Subsequent efforts to recover the over 200 cases of lost antiquities at Al-Qurnah, including a Japanese expedition in 1971-2, have as yet been unsuccessful.[11] One notable feature of the expedition was the use of a new and still secret procedure for making casts, developed by Lattin de Laval.[12]
Oppert and Thomas had already left the expedition in 1854, while Fresnel chose to remain in the Middle East. Further to the Al-Qurnah Disaster noted above, he died of consumption in Baghdad on 30 November 1855.[13] Perreymond his assistant, also died there in 1858, having been unable to return to France.[14]
Fresnel's notes on the expedition were included in the treatise, Expedition Scientifique En Mésopotamie: Exécutée Par Ordre Du Gouvernement De 1851 À 1854 by Julius Oppert first published in 1858.[15] A detailed report by Maurice Pillet on the travails and eventual unravelling of Fresnel's mission to Babylon was published in 1922.[5][16]
Personal life
[edit]Fresnel was born in Mathieu, Calvados in 1795 and was the youngest of four sons of an architect.[17] He married in 1849 to a Galla (Abyssinian) woman he had bought out of slavery during his time in Egypt. She would remain in Geneva while he led the mission to Mesopotamia.[5]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Wells, John C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.). Longman. ISBN 978-1-4058-8118-0..
- ^ "Fresnel" Archived 2020-05-11 at the Wayback Machine, Collins English Dictionary / Webster's New World College Dictionary.
- ^ Simeone Senelle, Marie-Claude. "The Modern South Arabian Languages." In Hetzron, R. (ed). 1997. The Semitic Languages. London: Routledge, p. 378-423. http://llacan.vjf.cnrs.fr/PDF/Publications/Senelle/SAMLanguages.pdf Archived 2020-07-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Jump up to: a b Larsen, M.T., The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land, Routledge, 2014, pp 307-08 and p. 315
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e Pillet, Maurice (1922). L'expédition scientifique et artistique de Mésopotamie et de Médie, 1851-1855 (in French). Paris: Éditions Champion. pp. VIII, 8, 337. Archived from the original on 2021-04-11. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
- ^ Çetinsaya, Gökhan (2006). The Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890-1908. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-34158-5. Archived from the original on 2021-05-21. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
- ^ Oppert, Jules; Fresnel, Fulgence; Thomas, Félix (1859–1863). Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie, exécutée... de 1851 à 1854. Tome 2 / par MM. Fulgence Fresnel, Félix Thomas et Jules Oppert (in French). Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale. Archived from the original on 2016-11-04. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
- ^ The mission documented that the palace of Wonders built by Nebuchadnezzar as described by Herodotus and Ctesias was under the hill of rubble known as Kasr (Pillet p.VIII)
- ^ The lost cargo was made up of hundreds of cases of antiquities from Victor Place's mission to Khorsabad, Rawlinson's to Kuyunjik and Fresnel's to Babylon.
- ^ Larsen, M.T. (1996). The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land (1st ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315862859 pp. 344-9
- ^ Jump up to: a b Namio Egami, "The Report of The Japan Mission For The Survey of Under-Water Antiquities At Qurnah: The First Season," (1971-72), 1-45, https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/orient1960/8/0/8_0_1/_pdf Archived 2018-10-31 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Moss, Stuart (13 December 2016). "'Ghost Objects' – 19th century paper mould techniques and the portability of antiquities". Bilderfahrzeuge (in German). Archived from the original on 2021-05-09. Retrieved 2021-04-09.
- ^ Pillet, Maurice (1922). L'expédition scientifique et artistique de Mésopotamie et de Médie, 1851-1855. Paris. pp. 178–83. Archived from the original on 2021-04-11. Retrieved 2021-04-08.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Pillet, Maurice (1922). L'expédition scientifique et artistique de Mésopotamie et de Médie, 1851-1855. Archived 2021-04-11 at the Wayback Machine Capitre XVIII La Mort de Perrymond Paris: Librarie Anciene Honore Champion, pp. 177–83.
- ^ Pouillon, F., Dictionnaire des Orientalistes de Langue Française, KARTHALA, 2008, p. 924
- ^ Genç, Bülent (October 2021). "Memory of destroyed Khorsabad, Victor Place, and the story of a shipwreck". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 31 (4): 759–774. doi:10.1017/S135618632100016X. ISSN 1356-1863.
- ^ J.H. Favre, "Augustin Fresnel", geneanet.org, accessed 30 August 2017.
Bibliography
[edit]- Pillet, Maurice (1922). L'expédition scientifique et artistique de Mésopotamie et de Médie, 1851-1855 (in French). Paris: Éditions Champion
- Oppert, Jules; Fresnel, Fulgence; Thomas, Félix (1859–1863). Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie, exécutée... de 1851 à 1854 (in French). Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale
- Larsen, M.T.(2014) The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land, Routledge
- H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings (biography)
- Namio Egami, "The Report of The Japan Mission For The Survey of Under-Water Antiquities At Qurnah: The First Season," (1971–72), 1-45,
- Gustave Vapereau (1858) "Dictionnaire universel des contemporains", Paris, Louis Hachette, 1858, p. 703. (in French)
- France Archives, Fouilles de Fulgence Fresnel en Mésopotamie. 1851-1869. (in French)
Selected publications
[edit]- L'Arabie vue en 1837-1838, Paris, Imp. nationale, 1871 ;
- « Lettre à M. Caussin de Perceval », 27 avril 1850, Journal asiatique, octobre 1850 ;
- Cinquième Lettre sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'islamisme à M. Stanislas Julien, Djeddah, février 1838 ;
- « L'Arabie », dans Revue des deux Mondes, vol. 17, 1839
- Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie, exécutée… de 1851 à 1854, par MM. Fulgence Fresnel, Félix Thomas et Jules Oppert, publiée par Jules Oppert ;
- Extraits d'une lettre de M. Fresnel… à M. Jomard,… sur certains quadrupèdes réputés fabuleux ;
- Lettre sur la géographie de l'Arabie ;
- Lettre sur la topographie de Babylone, écrite à M. Mohl ;
- Lettres sur l'histoire des Arabes avant l'islamisme, 1837 ;
- Lettres… à M. Mohl ;
- Mémoire de M. Fresnel, consul de France à Djeddah, sur le Waday (1848-1850) ;
- Notice sur le voyage de M. de Wrède dans la vallée de Doan et autres lieux de l'Arabie méridionale ;
- Notice sur les sources du Nil, à l'occasion d'une découverte récente ;
- Nouvelles et mélanges. Lettre à M. le rédacteur du ″Journal asiatique″, 2 mai 1839 ;
- Pièces relatives aux inscriptions himyarites découvertes par M. Arnaud, [Signé : Arnaud et F. Fresnel] ;
- Recherches sur les inscriptions himyariques de San'à, Khariba, Mareb, etc..
Translations
[edit]- Jöns Jacob Berzelius, De l'emploi du chalumeau dans les analyses chimiques et les déterminations minéralogiques, translated from Swedish by F. Fresnel, Paris, 1843
