Pierre Lecoq

Pierre Lecoq was born on June 9, 1939, in Liège, Belgium. He trained in linguistics and philology under Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin at the University of Liège, earning his doctorate in Oriental history and literature there in 1974, followed by a Doctorat d'État from the Sorbonne in 1983.

From the outset, Lecoq's scholarship centered on ancient Iranian languages, particularly Avestan philology and Old Persian epigraphy. His diachronic approach to Iranian languages, combined with deep knowledge of Indo-Iranian and Middle Iranian languages, led to a complete translation of the Achaemenid inscriptions incorporating their parallel Elamite and Babylonian versions. Among his major works are "Les inscriptions achéménides" (1997, Gallimard) and his French translation of "Les livres de l'Avesta" (2016), which has become an indispensable tool for scholars in the field.

He has also published extensively on living Iranian dialects, including a description of the Sivandi dialect of Fars (1979) and an extensive study of Kermanian dialects (2002). Lecoq has additionally proposed a hypothesis regarding the original homeland of the Kurdish language. From 1989 to 2007 he held the chair of Iranian linguistics and philology at the EPHE in Paris, and he has also taught at Paris III (Sorbonne-Nouvelle), INALCO, and taught Iranian epigraphy at the École du Louvre.

Among his more recent achievements is a complete verse translation of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh into French (2019, Les Belles Lettres), the first complete French rendering of the epic since Jules Mohl's nineteenth-century translation, which earned him honors including the Iraj Afshar Prize (2020). Lecoq has also received the 12th Farabi International Award.