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Joseph de Guignes (October 19, 1721–March 1800), French
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 orientalist and sinologist, was born at Pontoise
Pontoise

Pontoise is a Communes of France in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 28.4 km from the Kilometre Zero#France, in the "new town#France" of Cergy-Pontoise....
, the son of Jean Louis de Guignes and Françoise Vaillant. He died in Paris.

He succeeded Fourmont at the Royal Library as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. A Mémoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs, published by de Guignes in 1748, obtained his admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and he became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754.

Two years later he began to publish his learned and laborious Histoire générale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756-1758); and in 1757 he was appointed to the chair of Syriac at the Collège de France
Collège de France

The Coll?ge de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Ecoles....
.






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Joseph de Guignes (October 19, 1721–March 1800), French
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 orientalist and sinologist, was born at Pontoise
Pontoise

Pontoise is a Communes of France in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 28.4 km from the Kilometre Zero#France, in the "new town#France" of Cergy-Pontoise....
, the son of Jean Louis de Guignes and Françoise Vaillant. He died in Paris.

He succeeded Fourmont at the Royal Library as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. A Mémoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs, published by de Guignes in 1748, obtained his admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and he became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754.

Two years later he began to publish his learned and laborious Histoire générale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756-1758); and in 1757 he was appointed to the chair of Syriac at the Collège de France
Collège de France

The Coll?ge de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Ecoles....
. He maintained that the Chinese
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
 nation had originated in Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
ian colonization, an opinion to which, in spite of every argument, he obstinately clung. He published a number of articles arguing that Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs was a formal writing system used by the ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of logographic and alphabetic elements....
 and Chinese characters were related, one deriving from the other. Although he was mistaken in this, his is the first scholar known to have recognize the fact that cartouche
Cartouche

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is an oblong inclosure with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a pharaoh name, coming into use during the beginning of the Fourth dynasty of Egypt under Pharaoh Sneferu....
 rings in Egyptian texts contained royal names.

The Histoire had been translated into German by Dahnert (1768-1771).

One key idea which de Guines originated is the theory that the Huns
Huns

The Huns were a confederation of Central Asian Eurasian nomads or semi-nomads, who had established an empire in Eurasia. The Huns may have stimulated the Migration Period, a contributing factor in the collapse of the Roman Empire....
 who attacked the Roman Empire were the same people as the Xiongnu
Xiongnu

The Xiongnu were a confederation of nomadic tribes from Central Asia with a ruling class of unknown origin and other subjugated tribes. They lived on the steppes north of China, and appear in Chinese sources from the 3rd century BC as controlling an empire stretching beyond the borders of modern day Mongolia....
 mentioned in Chinese records. Most historians agree with this view, which was popularised by Gibbon's
Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788....
 Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was written by England historian Edward Gibbon and published in six volumes. Volume I was published in 1776, and went through six printings....


Joseph de Guignes' son, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes
Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes

Chr?tien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes was a France merchant-trader, ambassador and scholar. He was the son of French academician and sinologue, Joseph de Guignes....
 (1759-1845) learned Chinese from his father; and then the son went as consul to Canton (Guangzhou)
Guangzhou

'Guangzhou' is the Capital and a sub-provincial city of Guangdong Province of China in the northern and southern China part of the People's Republic of China....
, where he spent seventeen years. He returned to France in 1801. In 1808, he was charged by the government with the work of preparing a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary (Dictionnaire Chinois, Français et Latin, le Vocabulaire Chinois Latin, 1813). He was also the author of a work of travels (Voyages a Pékin, Manille, et l'île de France, 1808).

See Joseph Marie Quérard
Joseph Marie Quérard

'Joseph Marie Qu?rard' , was a France bibliographer.He was born at Rennes, where he was apprenticed to a bookseller. Sent abroad on business, he remained in Vienna from 1819 to 1824, and there drew up the first volumes of his great work, La France litt?raire, ou Dictionnaire bibliographique des savants, historiens, et gens de lettres de la...
, La France littéraire, where a list of the memoirs contributed by de Guignes to the Journal des esçrivans is given.