In 1914, Georges Roux was born in Salon-de-Provence, France. He spent 12 years with his parents in Syria and Lebanon as the son of an army officer before returning to the University of Paris to study medicine, graduating in 1941. He studied oriental studies at the École des Hautes Études while practicing medicine. In 1950, he joined the Iraq Petroleum Corporation as a medical officer, spending two years in Qatar and seven in Iraq. Between 1956 and 1960, he contributed articles to the IPC's widely circulated periodical, which eventually became Ancient Iraq, the official work on political, cultural, and social history from prehistoric Mesopotamia to the Christian era. The text has been translated into French, Arabic, Spanish, and Polish since it was first published in English in 1964.