Abstract
It is to Renan that specialists in cuneiform writing owe their name of Assyriologists. However, the confrontation of the ideas Renan had set out as early as 1855 in his famous Histoire générale des langues sémitiques with the results of deciphering the language did not go smoothly. In 1859, Oppert vigorously countered Renan's denial of the Semitic character of the Assyrian language. Renan subsequently sought to minimize the Semitic component of Assyrian and Babylonian culture as much as possible.
