Jimmy Daccache

I received my PhD from Paris IV Sorbonne in 2013. My dissertation dealt with the Semitic God Rašap, whose cult was widely spread chronologically (3^rd-1^st millennium BCE) and geographically (Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Israel, and Egypt). My center of interest is Northwest Semitic religions, culture and history through epigraphic and textual approaches.

From 2011 until 2016 I was a postdoctoral fellow in the “Floriental: From Babylon to Baghdad: Towards a History of the Herbal in the Near East” project supervised by Robert Hawley, hosted by the French CNRS (UMR 8167 Orient & Méditerranée – Mondes sémitiques) and funded by the European Research Council. It consisted in preparing a critical edition of the Syriac version of a medical compendium devoted to dietetics, that is, to the therapeutic properties of foodstuffs, based essentially on Galen’s Greek treatise “On the Properties of Foodstuffs”, compiled by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq in 9^th century ʿAbbāsid Baghdad, hitherto unpublished. Furthermore, an editio princeps of the Syriac translation of Galen’s book “Of Simple Drugs” made by Sergius of Raš ʿAynā (ms. BL Add 14661) during the 6^th century is in the course of preparation.

I joined the epigraphic team of the French-Syrian Missions of Syriac Epigraphy since 2008 and of Ugaritic since 2009. I participated in a project to draw and republish the Phoenician inscriptions of the Louvre, during Autumn 2010, launched by Élisabeth Fontan, former chief conservator in the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities at the Louvre Museum, and Françoise Briquel Chatonnet, with whom I also drew some of the Phoenician inscriptions held in the National Museum of Beirut, in the Summer of 2015, and in several Museums in Cyprus, in the Summer of 2016. I integrated in 2015 within the French mission, whose aim is to catalog the Syriac Manuscripts in the Patriarchate of the Syriac Catholic Church in Sharfeh-Lebanon, to review mainly the Garshuni manuscripts.

My research focuses currently on translation and interpretation within multicultural civilizations in the Ancient Near East.