Lilly Louise Kahil (born 2 July 1926, Zurich; died 4 December 2002, Garches) was a Swiss-French archaeologist and classicist of Egyptian-German descent. She was the founder of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae , an encyclopedia of ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman mythology.
Lilly Kahil was born on 2 July 1926 in Zurich. [1] Her mother was German, while her father belonged to a Melkite Egyptian family. Her father's sister, Mary Kahil, was known for her inter-faith dialogues with Louis Massignon, an Islamologist. She spent her youth in Egypt. [2] During her childhood, she suffered a long illness, was taught at home by private teachers and took her baccalaurét at the age of sixteen. She attended Cairo's Sacred Heart Convent. August 1945 she and her sister went to Europe for higher studies. [3] She studied for a year at the University of Basel with Karl Schefold, after which she attended the Sorbonne, where she received a degree in literature (1947) and a higher diploma in classical studies (1948). [4]
Kahil joined the French School at Athens, during which she prepared her doctoral thesis, titled Les enlèvements et le retour d'Hélène dans les texte et les documents figurés. [5] She defended her dissertation at Sorbonne in 1954. It won the Salomon Reinach prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and was published the following year.
In 1963 her family left Egypt following expropriation by Nasser's regime. [2]
Kahil was first married to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who would later become Secretary-General of the United Nations. [6] During this period, she went by the name of Ghali-Kahil. [1] Her second marriage was to Prof. René Ginouvès, a French archaeologist, whereupon she reverted to her maiden name. [2]
Following a long illness, Kahil died on 4 December 2002 at Garches. [1]
Lilly Kahil was a research associate at CNRS between 1955–1957. She became a professor at the University of Fribourg between 1957–1969. She was a professor at the University of Paris X-Nanterre for the next ten years, following which she was appointed Director of Research at CNRS. [1]
Kahil specialised in archaeology, the history of religions and mythology. She worked with the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece at the excavations at Eretria in 1964 and 1978. She also conducted digs at Soloi in Cyprus and Laodicea on the Lycus, as well as at Thasos on behalf of the French School of Athens, [3] publishing a report on the ceramics there in 1967.
She was one of the first archaeologists to develop an in-depth study of Geometric art in Greek ceramics, including those from Euboean workshops. A major contribution was on the iconography on vases found at the temple of Artemis in Brauron. [7] [8]
Kahil also conducted archaeological digs on behalf of the Institute of Advanced Study. [3] Her last project, a study of the white ground technique used on lekythos at the Louvre, remained unfinished at her death. [2]
During her professorship at Paris X-Nanterre, Kahil initiated a programme to document ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman mythology. The encyclopedia in twenty volumes, titled Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, was published between 1981 and 2009. [6] She served as its secretary-general, [1] and wrote several articles for it, notably those on Artemis and Helen. She established a network of academic organisations for the project, and set up a foundation based in Switzerland. Related conferences were organised at Thessaloniki in 1993, in Basel in 1994, Malibu in 1995 and at Oxford in 1996 towards the publication of the Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum, a systematic dictionary that has become a reference work on the cults and rites of ancient religions.
Jean Leclant was a renowned Egyptologist who was an Honorary Professor at the College of France, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters of the Institut de France, and Honorary Secretary of the International Association of Egyptologists.
Robert Flacelière was a scholar of Classical Greek. He was educated at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, the Lycée Henri IV and the École Normale Supérieure. From 1925 to 1930, he was a member of the French School in Athens and from 1932-1948 a Professor of the Faculty of Letters at University of Lyon. He was then appointed to the Chair of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Paris, a post he held until 1963 when he was appointed Director of the École Normale Supérieure.
Pierre Grimal was a French historian, classicist and Latinist. Fascinated by the Greek and Roman civilizations, he did much to promote the cultural inheritance of the classical world, both among specialists and the general public.
Professor Jean Pouilloux was a French hellenist archaeologist.
Noël Duval was a French archaeologist.
Francis Croissant was a French archaeologist and art historian specializing in Archaic Greece, especially sculpture.
Roland Martin was a French archaeologist.
Maurice Holleaux was a 19th–20th-century French historian, archaeologist and epigrapher, a specialist of Ancient Greece.
Ernest Louis Georges Will was a 20th-century French archaeologist and University professor, a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
Cécile Michel is a French epigrapher and archaeologist.
William Seston was a 20th-century French historian and epigrapher, a specialist of the history of the Roman Empire. He was professor at the Sorbonne and a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.
Jean-Louis Ferrary was a French historian, a specialist in ancient Rome.
Robert Schilling was a 20th-century French historian and Latinist, a specialist in the history of religion in ancient Rome.
Jacques Heurgon was a French university, normalian, Etruscan scholar and Latinist, professor of Latin language and literature at the Sorbonne. Married to Anne Heurgon-Desjardins, founder in 1952, of the Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle, he was the father of Marc Heurgon, politician and historian, Catherine Peyrou and Edith Heurgon who continued the "Colloques of Cerisy".
Jean Bayet was a French Latinist. A Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the Sorbonne, he was Director-General of Education in 1944 and Director of the École française de Rome from 1952 to 1960. In 1948 he was elected a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. A specialist of Latin literature and Religion in ancient Rome, Jean Bayet, through his works and the theses he directed, played a decisive role in the development of a French school of history of the Roman religion, particularly active in the second half of the twentieth century.
Jeanne Robert was a French ancient historian and epigrapher, and co-author and editor of many volumes on Greek epigraphy.
Pierre Chuvin was a French hellenist and historian. He was specialized on ancient Greece and Greek mythology, as well as modern Central Asia and the Turkic-speaking world.
The Neirab steles are two 8th-century BC steles with Aramaic inscriptions found in 1891 in Al-Nayrab near Aleppo, Syria. They are currently in the Louvre. They were discovered in 1891 and acquired by Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau for the Louvre on behalf of the Commission of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. The steles are made of black basalt, and the inscriptions note that they were funerary steles.
Leïla Ladjimi-Sebaï is a historian, archaeologist and epigrapher, writer and poet from Tunisia. She is a specialist in the history of Roman-era women in North Africa and the history of Carthage.
Luce Pietri is a French historian and scholar of late antiquity.
