Full Name Paul Pascal Henri Pognon Born 13 May 1853 Clermont-Ferrand Occupation Archaeologist
Epigrapher
Assyriologist Died 16 March 1921, Chambéry, France | ||
Henri Pognon (13 May 1853 – 16 March 1921) was a French archaeologist, epigrapher, specialist in Assyriology.
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Diplomatic career
The son of an ingénieur des ponts et chaussées, Henri Pognon passed his baccalauréat at the lycée of Clermont-Ferrand before moving to Paris where he studied law, graduated from the École des langues orientales and was a student at the École pratique des hautes études. In 1878, he created the course of assyrian language proposed by that latter institution and was responsible for teaching until 1881. He then embraced the diplomatic career. Entered in the Ministère des Affaires étrangères in the position of attaché to the direction of consulates in May 1879, he was appointed deputy consul at Tripoli in September 1881, passed to Beirut in May 1882 and then was reinstated in the position of Tripoli in May 1884. Transferred to the Baghdad consulate as manager in May 1887, he was promoted 2nd class consul in August of the same year. Made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur on 31 December 1892, he was elevated to the rank of first class consul in February 1895 and appointed consul of France in Aleppo (Syria) August 27, 1895.
In this capacity he reported the Hamidian massacres whose victims were 6000 Armenians on 28 October 1896. Placed on availability with the rank of consul general May 22, 1904, he was admitted to retirement in 1914.
Archaeological and epigraphic activities
Alongside his diplomatic career, Henri Pognon engaged in Mesopotamian archeology in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Combining field discoveries, acquisitions from local scouts and official prospecting missions, he collected Semitic inscriptions whose meaning he penetrated through an intense translation work. A specialist of the Assyrian, Syriac and Aramaic languages, he thus could provide numerous reference publications to research.
In 1883 he discovered two important inscriptions on bas-reliefs from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II in the Wadi Brissa in Lebanon.
He was elected a member of the Société de Linguistique de Paris in 1884.
By 1922, some manuscripts that belonged to him were given to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. His collection of Syriac manuscripts, gathered in Aleppo and Mosul, is the origin of much of the Graffin funds which in turn joined the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1989.