From the history of the decipherment of West Semitic writing: events and people. VII. Barthélemy the orientalist: between scholarship and high society. Part V

The final essay in a series of articles about the events and people who stood at the origins of West Semitic epigraphy in Europe is an overview of the last Orientalist works in the life of Barthélemy in the 60s of the 18th century, his close relations with opponents and the five-year pause in scholarly work, which was the result of the abbot’s friendly solidarity with his disgraced patron, the Duke de Choiseul, who was exiled from Paris to Chanteloup. The Duke’s return to the capital and the subsequent many years of the abbot’s hard work on a multi-volume archaeological novel were crowned with the triumphal march of Anacharsis across Europe on the very eve of the French Revolution, although this triumph did not prevent Barthélemy from perceiving the decline of his life as a “chain of misfortunes” and “the revenge of fate”.