ARCHAEOLOGISTS from France

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary French Archaeologists of all time. This list of famous French Archaeologists is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of French Archaeologists.

1. Jean-François Champollion (1790 - 1832)

With an HPI of 77.45, Jean-François Champollion is the most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 69 different languages on wikipedia.

Jean-François Champollion (French: [ʒɑ̃ fʁɑ̃swa ʃɑ̃pɔljɔ̃]), also known as Champollion le jeune ('the Younger'; 23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832), was a French philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. Partially raised by his brother, the scholar Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac, Champollion was a child prodigy in philology, giving his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in his late teens. As a young man he was renowned in scientific circles, and read Coptic, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Arabic. During the early 19th century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there (1798–1801) which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (recording semantic concepts directly). Many thought that the script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information. The significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, and made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians. Champollion lived in a period of political turmoil in France which continuously threatened to disrupt his research in various ways. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was able to avoid conscription, but his Napoleonic allegiances meant that he was considered suspect by the subsequent Royalist regime. His own actions, sometimes brash and reckless, did not help his case. His relations with important political and scientific figures of the time, such as Joseph Fourier and Silvestre de Sacy, helped him, although in some periods he lived exiled from the scientific community. In 1820, Champollion embarked in earnest on the project of decipherment of hieroglyphic script, soon overshadowing the achievements of British polymath Thomas Young, who had made the first advances in decipherment before 1819. In 1822, Champollion published his first breakthrough in the decipherment of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs – the first such script discovered. In 1824, he published a Précis in which he detailed a decipherment of the hieroglyphic script demonstrating the values of its phonetic and ideographic signs. In 1829, he traveled to Egypt where he was able to read many hieroglyphic texts that had never before been studied, and brought home a large body of new drawings of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Home again, he was given a professorship in Egyptology, but only lectured a few times before his health, ruined by the hardships of the Egyptian journey, forced him to give up teaching. He died in Paris in 1832, 41 years old. His grammar of Ancient Egyptian was published posthumously. During his life as well as long after his death, intense discussions over the merits of his decipherment were carried out among Egyptologists. Some faulted him for not having given sufficient credit to the early discoveries of Young, accusing him of plagiarism, and others long disputed the accuracy of his decipherments. But subsequent findings and confirmations of his readings by scholars building on his results gradually led to the general acceptance of his work. Although some still argue that he should have acknowledged the contributions of Young, his decipherment is now universally accepted and has been the basis for all further developments in the field. Consequently, he is regarded as the "Founder and Father of Egyptology".

2. Austen Henry Layard (1817 - 1894)

With an HPI of 58.99, Austen Henry Layard is the 2nd most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Sir Austen Henry Layard (; 5 March 1817 – 5 July 1894) was an English Assyriologist, traveller, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He was born to a mostly English family in Paris and largely raised in Italy. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Nineveh, where he uncovered a large proportion of the Assyrian palace reliefs known, and in 1851 the library of Ashurbanipal. Most of his finds are now in the British Museum. He made a large amount of money from his best-selling accounts of his excavations. He had a political career between 1852, when he was elected as a Member of Parliament, and 1869, holding various junior ministerial positions. He was then made ambassador to Madrid, then Constantinople, living much of the time in a palazzo he bought in Venice. During this period he built up a significant collection of paintings, which due to a legal loophole he had as a diplomat, he was able to extricate from Venice and bequeath to the National Gallery (as the Layard Bequest) and other British museums.

3. Alcide d'Orbigny (1802 - 1857)

With an HPI of 57.48, Alcide d'Orbigny is the 3rd most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 35 different languages.

Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny (6 September 1802 – 30 June 1857) was a French naturalist who made major contributions in many areas, including zoology (including malacology), palaeontology, geology, archaeology and anthropology. D'Orbigny was born in Couëron (Loire-Atlantique), the son of a ship's physician and amateur naturalist. The family moved to La Rochelle in 1820, where his interest in natural history was developed while studying the marine fauna and especially the microscopic creatures that he named "foraminiferans". In Paris he became a disciple of the geologist Pierre Louis Antoine Cordier (1777–1861) and Georges Cuvier. All his life, he would follow the theory of Cuvier and stay opposed to Lamarckism.

4. Paul Pelliot (1878 - 1945)

With an HPI of 57.38, Paul Pelliot is the 4th most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Paul Eugène Pelliot (28 May 1878 – 26 October 1945) was a French Sinologist and Orientalist best known for his explorations of Central Asia and acquirement of many important Chinese texts such as the Dunhuang manuscripts.

5. André Leroi-Gourhan (1911 - 1986)

With an HPI of 55.56, André Leroi-Gourhan is the 5th most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

André Leroi-Gourhan (; French: [ləʁwa guʁɑ̃]; 25 August 1911 – 19 February 1986) was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection.

6. Henri Breuil (1877 - 1961)

With an HPI of 55.19, Henri Breuil is the 6th most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 25 different languages.

Henri Édouard Prosper Breuil (28 February 1877 – 14 August 1961), often referred to as Abbé Breuil (French pronunciation: [abe bʁœj]), was a French Catholic priest, archaeologist, anthropologist, ethnologist and geologist. He is noted for his studies of cave art in the Somme and Dordogne valleys as well as in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, China with Teilhard de Chardin, Ethiopia, British Somali Coast Protectorate, and especially Southern Africa.

7. Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes (1788 - 1868)

With an HPI of 53.02, Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes is the 7th most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes (French pronunciation: [ʒak buʃe d(ə) kʁɛvkœʁ də pɛʁt]; 10 September 1788 – 5 August 1868), sometimes referred to as Boucher de Perthes (British English: BOO-shay də PAIRT), was a French archaeologist and antiquary notable for his discovery, in about 1830, of flint tools in the gravels of the Somme valley.

8. Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet (1821 - 1898)

With an HPI of 52.36, Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet is the 8th most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Louis Laurent Gabriel de Mortillet (29 August 1821 – 25 September 1898), French archaeologist and anthropologist, was born at Meylan, Isère.

9. Christiane Desroches Noblecourt (1913 - 2011)

With an HPI of 50.53, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt is the 9th most famous French Archaeologist.  Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Christiane Desroches Noblecourt (French pronunciation: [kʁistjan dɛʁɔʃ nɔbləkuʁ] ; 17 November 1913 – 23 June 2011) was a French Egyptologist. She was the author of many books on Egyptian art and history and was also known for her role in the International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia from flooding caused by the Aswan Dam.

10. Victor Loret (1859 - 1946)

With an HPI of 50.34, Victor Loret is the 10th most famous French Archaeologist.  His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Victor Clement Georges Philippe Loret (1 September 1859 – 3 February 1946) was a French Egyptologist.