Georges Dumézil was born in Paris on the 4th of March 1898. His father Jean Dumézil served as a highly educated general in the French Army. This family background placed young Georges within an elite circle from his earliest days. He attended several prestigious schools including Lycée Louis-le-Grand and Lycée de Tarbes. By age twelve he had mastered Ancient Greek and Latin. A friend's grandfather Michel Bréal introduced him to Sanskrit at a time when few Westerners studied it. Bréal himself had been a student of Franz Bopp. This early exposure sparked a lifelong fascination with Indo-European mythology.
World War I interrupted his academic path in 1916. Dumézil joined the French Army as an artillery officer. He earned the Croix de Guerre for his service during the conflict. His father held the rank of inspector-general of the French artillery corps throughout the war. These shared experiences bound them together even as the front lines shifted. After the armistice Dumézil returned to École normale supérieure in 1919. There he met Antoine Meillet who would become his most important teacher. Meillet provided a rigorous introduction to Iranian and Indo-European linguistics. Unlike many other students Dumézil cared more about mythology than pure language mechanics.
Istanbul And The Ossetian Connection
From 1925 until 1931 Dumézil taught history of religions at Istanbul University. This period marked the happiest years of his life according to his own later reflections. While living there he acquired proficiency in Armenian and Ossetian languages. He also learned many non-Indo-European tongues spoken across the Caucasus region. This linguistic mastery allowed him to study the Nart saga which became central to his research. He published influential monographs on these myths while residing in Turkey.
Dumézil made yearly visits back to Istanbul after returning to France. During these trips he conducted field research among Ossetians living in Turkey. His work on Scythian and Ossetian mythology proved indispensable for future theories. In 1929 he published Le problème des centaures examining similarities between Greek and Indo-Iranian texts. This book along with earlier works formed what he called his Ambrosia cycle. A Scythian comb found at Solokha illustrates the material culture he studied. These artifacts helped ground his abstract ideas in tangible historical evidence. By 1930 he had already written La préhistoire indo-iranienne des castes drawing from Avestan Persian Greek and Arabic sources.