Eugène Burnouf

Who was Eugène Burnouf?

Eugène Burnouf was an eminent French scholar and orientalist who made significant contributions to the deciphering of Old Persian cuneiform.

He was born in Paris. His father, Professor Jean-Louis Burnouf, was a classical scholar of high reputation, and the author, among other works, of an excellent translation of Tacitus. Eugène Burnouf published in 1826 an Essai sur le Pali ..., written in collaboration with Christian Lassen; and in the following year Observations grammaticales sur quelques passages de l'essai sur le Pali.

The next great work he undertook was the deciphering of the Avesta manuscripts brought to France by Anquetil-Duperron. By his research a knowledge of the Avestan language was first brought into the scientific world of Europe. He caused the Vendidad Sade, to be lithographed with the utmost care from the manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and published it in folio parts, 1829-1843.

From 1833 to 1835 he published his Commentaire sur le Yaçna, l'un des livres liturgiques des Parses.

At about the same time in his life, Eugène Burnouf made significant contributions to the decyphering of Old Persian cuneiform. Copies of cuneiform inscriptions from Persepolis had been published by Carsten Niebuhr many years earlier in 1778 and some preliminary inferences had already been made by other scholars about these Persian inscriptions. In 1836, Eugène Burnouf discovered that the first of the inscriptions contained a list of the satrapies of Darius. With this clue in his hand, he was able to identify and publish an alphabet of thirty letters, most of which he had correctly deciphered.