ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH

By Corinne Welger-Barboza

With two websites, Achemenet and M.A.V.I. (Virtual Interactive Achaemenid Museum), the field of Achaemenid studies is very well represented on the Web. Especially considering on the one hand that both projects come from a highly specialized and rather small scholarly community, on the other hand that both projects result from the same initiative, Pierre Briant’s, Professor at the Collège de France, chair holder in the History and Civilization of the Achaemenid World and the Empire of Alexander the Great (the only one worldwide). The joint analysis of both realizations enables to better consider what distinguishes these two online propositions and what makes them complementary. Achemenet brings in play a federative resources center for a scattered scholarly community. The Virtual Interactive Achaemenid Museum distinguishes itself by offering a demanding interactivity in the service of the study of various objects which represent as many resources for this field’s study. This article deciphers the wide extent of various resources available on both websites, high resolution images, textual sources, diversified documents (etc.), while also bringing to light some problems in the design of both projects such as a certain opacity in classification and signposting. Beyond the mere access to the data, it is the wide range of tools offered by both projects, such as the tools of image manipulation and appropriation on MAVI, and the diversity of the disciplinary approaches, from epigraphy to anthropology, from history to archaeology, which represent the real achievement of these two online resources. Above all, the realizations of Pierre Briant and his team work towards putting the question of the images - particularly omnipresent for the art historians - where it belongs : beyond the search for images (never before were they that numerous and that spread), it is the appropriation of digital images which is at issue.