Cécile Michel (born 20 April 1962, Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French epigrapher and archaeologist.
Career
After Michel defended her thesis in 1988 (Les Marchands Inaya dans les tablettes cappadociennes) at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, she joined the CNRS in 1990. She taught at the Paris 8 University and the Institut catholique de Paris. She won the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres prize in 1999 and in 2002, the Prix Delalande-Guéreau. She supported a habilitation to direct research in 2004 at Paris VIII. Since 2007, she is in the archaeology and sciences of antiquity laboratory. A visiting professor at the Centre for Textile Research in Copenhagen, she is a member of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg.
A member of the international group of Assyriologists responsible for deciphering the cuneiform tablets discovered at Kültepe (central Anatolia), she conducts research on archives, Mesopotamian trade, organization of society, women and the history of Gender. Her publications also deal with everyday life and material culture in Mesopotamia, as well as education, learning to read and write. Linking the observation of a solar eclipse with the archaeological, dendrochronological and textual data, she proposed an absolute dating for the chronology of the early second millennium BC.
In July 2014, she was elected president of the International Association for Assyriology.
Bibliography
Books
2015: (with T. Tessier) Le Tour du monde des écritures, Paris, Rue des Enfants
2014: (with C. Breniquet, éd.) Wool Economy in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean: from the Beginnings of Sheep Husbandry to Institutional Textile Industry, Ancient Textiles 17, Oxbow Books, Oxford 2014: (with P. Bordreuil, F. Briquel-Chatonnet, dir.)Les débuts de l’histoire. Civilisations et cultures du Proche-Orient ancien, Paris : Éditions Khéops 2013: (with C. Baroin, dir.) Richesse et sociétés, Colloques de la Maison René-Ginouvès 9, Paris : De Boccard 2010: (with M.-L. Nosch, éd.) Textile Terminologies in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean from the Third to the First millennia BC, Ancient Textiles Series 8, Oxford: Oxbow Books 2009: (with B. Lion, éd.) Histoires de déchiffrements. Les écritures du Proche-Orient à l’Égée, Paris : éditions errance, coll. Les Hespérides 2008: (éd.)Old Assyrian Studies in Memory of Paul Garelli, Old Assyrian Archives Studies 4, Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul, vol. CXII, Leyden 2008: (with B. Lion, éd.) Les écritures cunéiformes et leur déchiffrement, B. Lion et C. Michel (dir.), Travaux de la Maison René-Ginouvès 4, Paris: De Boccard 2006: (with B. Lion, éd.) De la domestication au tabou : le cas des suidés au Proche-Orient ancien, Travaux de la Maison René-Ginouvès 1, Paris: De Boccard 2003: Old Assyrian Bibliography of Cuneiform Texts, Bullae, Seals and the Results of the Excavations at Assur, Kültepe/Kanis, Acemhöyük, Alishar and Bogazköy, Old Assyrian Archives Studies 1, Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul, vol. XCVII, Leyden 2001: (F. Joannès dir., assisted by C. Michel) Dictionnaire de la civilisation mésopotamienne, Collection BOUQUINS, Editions Robert Laffont 2001: Correspondance des marchands de Kaniš au début du IIe millénaire av. J.-C., Littératures du Proche-Orient ancien, n° 19, Éditions du Cerf 1997: (with P. Garelli) Tablettes paléo-assyriennes de Kültepe 1 (Kt 90/k), Istanbul 1991: Innāya dans les tablettes paléo-assyriennes, Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, A.D.P.F., Paris, 1991. Two volumes : I. Analyse, 290 p., II. Édition des textes 1987 Nouvelles tablettes “cappadociennes" du Louvre, Revue d’Assyriologie 81