Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin

There he learned Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Syriac and Turkish, plus the basics of several other languages such as Zend and Georgian.

On 2 September 1820 he was elected a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, part of the Institut de France.

In 1802, Friedrich Münter realized that recurring groups of characters must be the word for "king" (𐎧𐏁𐎠𐎹𐎰𐎡𐎹, now known to be pronounced xšāyaθiya).

[3] It was only in 1823 that Grotefend's discovery was confirmed, when the French archaeologist Champollion, who had just deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, had the idea of deciphering the quadrilingual hieroglyph-cuneiform inscription on the famous alabaster vase in the Cabinet des Médailles, the Caylus vase.

[5][8] Saint-Martin attempted to define an Old Persian cuneiform alphabet, of which 10 letters were correct, on a total of 39 signs he had identified.