Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, French archaeologist and author (born 1716)

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy

French writer and numismatist (1716–1795)

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy was a French Catholic clergyman, archaeologist, numismatologist and scholar who became the first person to decipher an extinct language. He deciphered the Palmyrene alphabet in 1754 and the Phoenician alphabet in 1758.