FOURMO'NT, MICHE'L, younger brother of Etienne, born in 1690, exhibited also a facility for learning languages : he assisted his Mother in his philological !aboard, was made profeseor of Syriao in the College Royal in 1720, and-he gave also from his chair lectures ou the Ethiopic language. In 1726,• being sent by the government to Greece to pur chase manuscripts and copy inscriptions, he gathered a rich harvest of both. He boasted of having copied more than 1000 inscriptions, chiefly in Attica and the Pelopoonesus, which bad escaped the researches of Spon and Wheeler end other travellers. These copies were deposited iu the Royal Library at Paris. Mauy of these inscrip tions are authentic, but others are forgeries, although Raoul Rochette (' Lettres our l'Authentieit6 dee Inscriptions de Fouruiont,'Paris,1319) defends their authenticity. In his letters to Frcret and Count Maurspas, Fourmout bouts of having defaced or destroyed the remains of anti quity of several cities of Greece, and among others those of the temple of Jupiter at Antyclre—a boast as unmanly as it Is false, or at least absurdly exaggerated. (Dodwell, ' Tour through Graeae,' voL ii. ch. 11.)
Ile died In 1716, having published only some detached papers in the ' Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions,' of which he was a member.
CLAUDIt Louts FOURMONT, his nephew, who had accompanied him t3 Greece, returned to the Levant, and remained several years In Egypt.
On his return to France he published a ' Description hieterique et des Plalues d'llcliopolis et do Memphis,' 12tne, 1755. It Is a sensible, unpretending little work, and gives a satisfactory account of the condition of Egypt at that time. Claude Fourmont died in 1780.