FOURMONT, Étienne (1683-1745), a French Orientalist, was born atHabelai, near Saint Denis, in 1683. He studied in Mazarin College, and afterwards in the seminary of Trente-trois. Here his attention was attracted to Oriental languages, and shortly after leaving the seminary he published a Traduction du Commentaire du Rabbin Abraham Aben Esra sur V Ecclesiaste. He subsequently studied at Navarre, and in 1705 brought out Nouvelle Critique Sacrée, which gained him the notice of the professors of the Sorbonne. In 1711 Louis XIV. appointed Fourinont to assist a young Chinese, Hoan-ji, in compiling a Chinese grammar, and notwithstanding that Hoan-ji died in 1716, Fourmont persevered alone at the task assigned him, and published in 1737 Meditationes Sinicce, and in 1742 Grammatica Sinica. Besides numerous other works connected with Oriental literature, he is the author of Réflexions Critiques sur les Histoires des Anciens Peuples, Paris, 1735, and several dissertations printed in the Mémoires of the Academy of Inscriptions. He became professor of Arabic in the Royal College in 1715. In 1713 he was elected a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, in 1738 a member of the Royal Society of London, and in 1741 a member of that of Berlin. Ho died at Paris in December 1745. He must not be confounded with Michel Fourmont (1690-1746), his youngest brother, who also was a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, was professor of the Syriac language in the Royal College, and was sent by the Government to copy inscriptions in Greece.