Del Medico, Henri E.°
DEL MEDICO, HENRI E.°
DEL MEDICO, HENRI E. ° (1896–?), scholar, writer and translator. Del Medico was born in Constantinople into a banking family. He left Turkey in 1922 and studied Semitics first in France and during World War ii at the Pontifical Institute at Rome. His main interests were Jewish literature of the Roman diaspora in the early centuries c.e.s; the Hittites; the Ugaritic texts of Ras Shamra, which he translated, not quite satisfactorily, into French (La Bible cananéene, découverte dans les textes de Ras Shamra, 1950); and especially the Dead Sea Scrolls. On these Del Medico published a number of studies, some translated into English (Riddle of the Scrolls, 1958), Italian, and Spanish, in which he assumes a rather later date for their origin than the majority of scholars. He also published a number of studies in Byzantine civilization and translated German, English, Italian, and Spanish works into French.
[Rene Samuel Sirat]