Pierre Lecoq

Pièrre Lecoq is a Belgian philologist, historian, and Iranologist.

Born in 1939, Pierre Lecoq is a linguist and philologist trained by Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin at the University of Liège. Lecoq first devoted his work to ancient Iranian languages, mainly to Avestan philology and Old Persian epigraphy. His diachronic approach to Iranian languages, enriched by his in-depth knowledge of Indo-Iranian and Middle Iranian languages, as well as his studies on the historical phonology and paleography of Old Persian cuneiform, have resulted in the presentation of a full translation of Achaemenid inscriptions (2020), in which he incorporated the parallel versions in Elamite and Babylonian. Lecoq's French translation of the Avesta (Paris, 2016) is among his major recent works.

In the field of Iranian dialectology, Lecoq has published widely on living Iranian languages. This includes a description of the Sivandi language spoken in Fars (1979) and a voluminous study on the dialects spoken in ancient Carmania, which he names Kermanian dialects (2002). Lecoq has also made a hypothesis on the initial habitat of the Kurdish language.

In the field of Persian language and literature, Lecoq recently published a French translation of the Shahnameh, a sequel to the 19th century translation by Julius von Mohl.

A festschrift, with contributions by his colleagues and student, was published in honor of Piere Lecoq in 2016.

Lecoq was awarded with the 12th Farabi International Award;

Philippe Swennen. Comptes rendus. Pierre Lecoq (éd.). Les livres de l’Avesta. Les textes sacrés des Zoroastriens, trad. par P. Lecoq, Paris, Éd. du Cerf, 2016. https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-2019-3-page-844.htm