JOACHIM

See also:

• JOACHIM MENANT (1820—1899)

MENANT (1820—1899)  , French magistrate and orientalist, was born at Cherbourg on the 16th of April 182o . He was educated for the law, and became vice-president of the civil tribunal of Rouen in 1878, and a member of the tour d'appel three years later . But he became best known by his studies on the cuneiform inscriptions . Among his works on the subject of Assyriology are: Recueil d'alphabets des ecritures cuneiformes (186o); Expose des elements de la grammaire assyrienne (1868); Le Syllabaire assyrien (2 vols., 1869-1873); Les Langues perdues de la Perse et de l'Assyrie (2 vols., 1885-1886); Les Pierres gravees de la Haute-Asie (2 vols., 1883-1886) . He also collaborated with Julius Oppert . He was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions in 1887, and died in Paris on the 30th of August 1899 . His daughter DELPHINE (b . 185o) received a prize from the Academy for her Les Parsis, histoire des communautes zoroastriennes de l'Inde (1898), and was sent in 1900-1901 to British India on a scientific mission, of which she published a report in 1903 . M$NARD, LOUIS NICOLAS (1822-1901), French man of letters, was born in Paris on the 19th of October 1822 . His versatile genius occupied itself in turn with chemistry, poetry, painting and history . In 1843 he published, under the pseudonym of L. de Senneville, a translation of Promethee delivre . Turning to chemistry, he discovered collodion in 1846, but its value was not recognized at the time; and its application later to surgery and photography brought him no advantage .

Louis Menard was a socialist, always in advance of the reform movements of his time . After 1848 he was condemned to imprisonment for his

Prologue d'une revolution . He escaped to London, returning to Paris only in 1852 . Until r86o he occupied himself with classical studies, the fruits of which are to be seen in his Fames (1855), Polytheisme hellenique (1863), and two academic theses, De sacra poesi graecorum and La Morale avant les philosophes (186o) . The next ten years Menard spent chiefly among the Barbizon artists, and he exhibited several pictures . He was in London at the time of the Commune, and defended it with his pen . In 1887 he became professor at the Ecole des Arts decoratifs, and in 1895 professor of universal history at the Hotel de Ville in Paris . His Reveries d'un pal"en mystique (1876), which contained sonnets, philosophical dialogues and some stories, was followed in 1896 by Fames et reveries d'un pa en mystique . Menard died in Paris on the 12th of February Ig01 . His works include: Histoire des anciens peuples de l'Orient (1882); Histoire des Israelites d'aprbs l'exegbse biblique (1883), and Histoire des Grecs (1884–1886) . There is an appreciation of Menard in the opening chapter of Maurice Barres's Voyage de Sparte .