Jacques Jarry (17 October 1929 – 18 January 2023) was a French linguist and archeologist.[1]
Born in Niort on 17 October 1929, Jarry attended secondary school in Paris before entering the École normale supérieure in 1949.[2] After that, he became an honorary member of the Institut du Caire and practiced archeology in France, Egypt, and the Middle East. A linguist and interpreter, he was fluent in fifteen languages: Japanese, Korean, Russian, German, Italian, Spanish, English, Arabic, Latin, ancient and modern Greek, and French.[citation needed]
During the 1960s, Jarry lived in Lebanon, where he married and saw the birth of his first child, a daughter. In 1965, he went to Egypt and participated in archeological excavations. He was then sent to Nigeria and Japan, where he settled and started a new family. He returned to France in 1975 and obtained a teaching position at the Lycée de Melle. He participated in excavations with secondary school students, including along the Niort ring road.[citation needed]
Jarry lived in France throughout the 1980s, where he carried out excavations along the A10 autoroute in Deux-Sèvres. During this era, he also spent time in Japan, where he worked as a professor and interpreter at Hiroshima University.[3] He retired in 2009 and lived near Niort, where he wrote a book titled Inscriptions latines et étrangères du Poitou. Throughout his career, his work on archeological excavations gained international renown.[4][5][6] During his retirement, he examined the Glozel artifacts and shed new light on their linguistics.[7] He shared his findings at the science festival in Faye-l'Abbesse in 2009.[citation needed]
