Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin
Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin (17 January 1791 – 17 July 1832) was a French academic, orientalist, and pioneer in the field of what would be known as Armenian Studies.
Biography[]
Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin was born in Paris on 17 January 1791, the son of a tradesman. Intending to enter commerce, he attended the Collège des Quatre-Nations. There he learned Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Syriac and Turkish, plus the basics of several other languages such as Zend and Georgian. By the age of 20 he had already acquired a solid theory and spoken fluency in Armenian and Arabic.
On 2 September 1820 he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, part of the Institut de France.
In April 1821 he probably was the "Saint Martin" who published the first decipherment of ain inscription in the Lycian language.[1]
He later entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1822 he was one of the founders of the Société Asiatique, and directed the publication of its journal, the Journal Asiatique. In 1824 he was appointed director of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal.
He was responsible for inducing the French government to send the researcher Friedrich Eduard Schulz to the Lake Van region of Armenia in 1827, and in 1828 published Schulz's first report on the remains of the hitherto unknown Urartian civilization.
Saint-Martin died of cholera in Paris on 17 July 1832 during the second pandemic.
Contribution to the decipherment of cuneiform[]
The early attempts at deciphering Old Persian cuneiform were made by Münter and Grotefend by guesswork only, using Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions found in Persepolis. In 1802, Friedrich Münter realized that recurring groups of characters must be the word for “king” (