Abstract
The British Assyriologist Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933) was a Francophile, as his autobiography shows. His passive correspondence, preserved in Oxford and still largely unpublished, confirms this. It includes letters from such turn-of-the-century giants of Assyriology and Egyptology as Jules Oppert, François Lenormant and François Thureau-Dangin on the one hand, Gaston Maspero and Henri Édourad Naville on the other, as well as letters from other protagonists of the heroic age of Ancient Near Eastern studies, including Jacques de Morgan, Joseph Halévy, Georges Perrot and Salomon Reinach. Also of interest are the letters Sayce received from lesser-known French orientalists such as Arthur Amiaud, Albert Terrien de Lacouperie and Stanislas Guyard. The documentation is completed by letters from a dozen other scholars active south of the Channel.
Our paper will give an overview of this correspondence, which enriches the picture of the dense relations between orientalists in Oppert's time and in the years following his death.
