Jean Nougayrol was a French cuneiformist[1] who studied a number of the Amarna letters.

[2] Nougayrol studied Hebrew under Georges Boyer before becoming interested in cuneiform writing.

While studying at the École Biblique in Jerusalem in 1935, he began to study Cylinder seals and published a book about them.

He was curator of Oriental Antiquity at the Louvre from 1947 to 1960.

In 1968, he became a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.