The son of an ingénieur des ponts et chaussées, Henri Pognon passed his baccalauréat at the lycée of Clermont-Ferrand before moving to Paris where he studied law, graduated from the École des langues orientales and was a student at the École pratique des hautes études. In 1878, he created the course of Assyrian language proposed by that latter institution, and was responsible for teaching until 1881. He then embraced the diplomatic career. Entered in the Ministère des Affaires étrangères in the position of attaché to the direction of consulates in May 1879, he was appointed deputy consul at Tripoliin September 1881, passed to Beirut in May 1882 and then was reinstated in the position of Tripoli in May 1884. Transferred to the Baghdad consulate as manager in May 1887, he was promoted 2nd class consul in August of the same year. Made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur on 31 December 1892, he was elevated to the rank of first class consul in February 1895 and appointed consul of France in Aleppo August 27, 1895. In this capacity he reported the Hamidian massacres whose victims were 6000 Armenians on 28 October 1896. Placed on availability with the rank of consul generalMay 22, 1904, he was admitted to retirement in 1914.
Archaeological and epigraphic activities
Alongside his diplomatic career, Henri Pognon engaged in Mesopotamian archeology in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Combining field discoveries, acquisitions from local scouts and official prospecting missions, he collected Semitic inscriptions whose meaning he penetrated through an intense translation work. A specialist of the Assyrian, Syriac and Aramaic languages, he thus could provide numerous reference publications to research. In 1883 he discovered two important inscriptions on bas-reliefs from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II in the Wadi Brissa in Lebanon. He was elected a member of the Société de Linguistique de Paris in 1884. By 1922, some manuscripts that belonged to him were given to the Bibliothèque nationale de France. His collection of Syriac manuscripts, gathered in Aleppo and Mosul, is the origin of much of the Graffin funds which in turn joined the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1989.
Publications
Books
1879–1880: L'Inscription de Bavian, texte, traduction et commentaire philologique, Paris, Bibliothèque de l'École des hautes études. Sciences philologiques et historiques, 2 fascicules, reprint 2011.
1884: Inscription de Mérou-Nérar Ier, roi d'Assyrie, Paris, Imprimerie nationale.
1887: Les inscriptions babyloniennes du Wadi Brissa, Bibliothèque de l'École des hautes études. Sciences philologiques et historiques, reprint 2011.
1898: Inscriptions mandaïtes des coupes de Khouabir : texte, traduction et commentaire philologique avec quatre appendices et un glossaire, Paris, H. Wetter.
1903: Une version syriaque des Aphorismes d'Hippocrate, texte et traduction, Leipzig, J. C. Hinrichs.
1907: Inscriptions sémitiques de la Syrie, de la Mésopotamie et de la région de Mossoul, Paris, J. Gabalda.
Articles
1883: « Inscription de Mérou-Nérar Ier, roi d'Assyrie », Journal asiatique
1884: « Trois textes funéraires de Palmyre », Journal asiatique
1885: « Rapport de Henri Pognon, consul-suppléant de France à Beyrouth à M. Patrimono, consul de Beyrouth », Revue Assyrienne
1887: « Sur un plat avec inscription punique », Journal asiatique
1888: « Découverte de contrats de l'époque de la 1ère dynastie de Babylone », Journal asiatique
1891: « Deux briques avec légendes araméennes », Journal asiatique
1892: « Note sur le pays d'Achnounnak », Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres
