Jacques Jean Marie de Morgan (3 June 1857, Huisseau-sur-Cosson, Loir-et-Cher – 14 June 1924) was a French scientist, engineer, and geologist. Since the end of the 19th century, he worked as an engineer in Armenia, as well as conducted archaeological excavations in the country. In 1887-1889, he discovered 8th-century BC stone tombs in Akhtala filled with clay, bronze, and iron items.
In addition, his group discovered a unique crypt dating back to the 3rd millennium BC, to a time when people were buried in a seated position. “This area is of particular interest for the study of the origin of metals. More ancient than Europe and Greece, it still keeps the traces of civilizations that have become our cradle,” wrote the scientist in his memoirs.
Jacques de Morgan authored well-known scientific works on the history of the Armenian people and regularly published articles in French magazines and newspapers about the atrocities carried out against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
In 1918, he published a book called “Against the Barbarians of the East”. Jacques de Morgan could not accept the fact that at the beginning of the civilized 20th century, the fundamental right to live of an entire nation had been violated.
Jacques de Morgan was familiar with the Armenian ethnos, the chronicle of which he traced from the times of the antique state Urartu (also known as the Kingdom of Van). Being the first serious research work in the field, his scientific work “Mission in the Caucasus” would serve as the basis of Caucasian studies.
Up until today, when writing anything about the Caucasus of this antique period, scholars are referencing Jacques de Morgan’s unique monograph. The research materials of the scientist are now stored in the National Archaeological Museum in Saint-Germain in France, as well as in the Museum of History of Armenia.
