Henri Seyrig


Henri Arnold Seyrig was a French archaeologist, numismatist, and historian of antiquities. He was general director of antiquities of Syria and Lebanon since 1929 and director during more than twenty years of the Institute of archaeology of Beirut.

Early life

Henri was born to a liberal multi-lingual bourgeois industrial Calvinist family. His family moved to Mulhouse when his father joined the family business, he was schooled in German. He was later sent to a French Protestant private boarding school in Normandy, Ecole des Roches, Seyrig continued his education in English at Oxford until 1914.
During World War I Seyrig fought at Verdun and was decorated. In 1917 Seyrig joined the Orient contingent in Salonika where he had his first encounter with archeology and left his family business. He then attended the Sorbonne where he presented a thesis about the Homeric House and in 1922 was admitted to the French School at Athens where he spent seven years as a member and was promoted to secretary general's office.

Career

In 1929, Seyrig was called recommended by the master of Levantine archaeology René Dussaud and was appointed General director of antiquities of Syria and Lebanon which were under French mandate. Seyrig created the French institute of archaeology in Beirut which he headed for 20 years. He moved to New York City in 1942 where he worked as a special envoy of The Free French Government until the end of the war then he returned to Beirut.
Throughout the 1950s/60s he was a visiting scholar invited by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, living part of the year in the United States. In 1967 he left Beirut and retired in Switzerland and continued with his wife, Hermine de Saussure, to spend part of the year in Princeton, New Jersey. Their children were actress Delphine Seyrig and composer Francis Seyrig.
He was awarded the medal of the Royal Numismatic Society in 1961.

Publications

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