Brasseur de Bourbourg, Charles-Étienne

▪ French missionary and ethnographer

born Sept. 8, 1814, Bourbourg, near Dunkirk, France

died Jan. 8, 1874, Nice

      French missionary and ethnographer who specialized in the prehistory of Central America and Mexico.

      After study at Ghent and Rome, he entered the Roman Catholic priesthood (1845). He was professor of ecclesiastical history in the Quebec seminary in 1845 and vicar general at Boston in 1846. From 1848 to 1863 he traveled as a missionary, chiefly in Mexico and Central America. He gave great attention to Mexican antiquities, published in 1857–59 a history of Aztec civilization, and from 1861 to 1864 edited a collection of documents in the indigenous languages. In 1863 he announced the discovery of a key to Mayan hieroglyphic writing, but it has since proved to be of little value. In 1864 he was archaeologist to the French military expedition in Mexico, and his Monuments anciens du Mexique was published by the French government in 1866. Perhaps his greatest service was the publication in 1861 of a French translation of the Popol Vuh, a sacred book of the Quiché Indians, together with a Quiché grammar, and an essay on Central American mythology. In 1871 he brought out his Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatemalienne and in 1869–70 gave the principles of his decipherment of Mayan picture-writing in his Manuscrit Troano, études sur le système graphique et la langue des Mayas.

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