Lilly Kahil

Lilly Louise Kahil (2 July 1926 – 4 December 2002) was a Swiss-French archaeologist and classicist of Egyptian-German descent. She was the founder of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, an encyclopedia of ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman mythology.

Life Lilly Kahil was born on 2 July 1926 in Zürich. During her childhood, she suffered a long illness, was taught at home by private teachers and took her baccalaurét at the age of sixteen. She attended Cairo's Sacred Heart Convent. August 1945 she and her sister went to Europe for higher studies. She studied for a year at the University of Basel with Karl Schefold, after which she attended the Sorbonne, where she received a degree in literature (1947) and a higher diploma in classical studies (1948).

Kahil joined the French School at Athens, during which she prepared her doctoral thesis, titled Les enlèvements et le retour d'Hélène dans les texte et les documents figurés. She defended her dissertation at Sorbonne in 1954. It won the Salomon Reinach prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and was published the following year.

In 1963 her family left Egypt following expropriation by Nasser's regime. Her second marriage was to Prof. René Ginouvès, a French archaeologist, whereupon she reverted to her maiden name.

Kahil also conducted archaeological digs on behalf of the Institute of Advanced Study. She served as its secretary-general, and wrote several articles for it, notably those on Artemis and Helen. She established a network of academic organisations for the project, and set up a foundation based in Switzerland. Related conferences were organised at Thessaloniki in 1993, in Basel in 1994, Malibu in 1995 and at Oxford in 1996 towards the publication of the Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum, a systematic dictionary that has become a reference work on the cults and rites of ancient religions.

Selected works

Awards and honours 1954: Salomon Rainach prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. 1985: Gustave Mendel prize of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. 1989: Honorary Member of the Archaeological Society of Athens. 1989: Foreign Honorary Member of the Archaeological Institute of America.