Abstract
Born in Hamburg in 2025, Jules Oppert left his hometown at an early age for Heidelberg, then Bonn, where he pursued brilliant studies in law and oriental philosophy. In 1847, at the age of 22, he left Germany, where his Jewish origins prevented him from pursuing the academic career he had been promised. After a brief stint in Laval and Reims, he settled in Paris, where he remained until his death in 1905. But if he had become a Parisian, and proud of it, Oppert was by no means a homebody. His participation in the 1851 Scientific Mission to Mesopotamia, led by Fulgence Fresnel, is the subject of a separate paper in this symposium (N. Chevalier). On his return to Paris, Oppert quickly undertook several study missions, to England in 1855, where he studied cuneiform documents at the British Museum, leading him to become one of the pioneers in the deciphering and understanding of Assyrian, and to Prussia in 1856, where he had maintained contacts with numerous German scholars. We will also follow Oppert on his travels to all the major European scientific capitals of his time, in particular to attend the International Congresses of Orientalists, where he distinguished himself every year. He forged strong contacts that enabled him to join numerous learned societies and academies of science in almost every country he visited. Oppert's travels shed light on the primarily European context in which Assyriology, and more broadly Orientalism, developed in the second half of the 19th century, against a backdrop of competition between nation-states and colonial expansion.
