Michel Fourmont (1690–1746), was a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and professor of the Syriac language in the Royal College, and was sent by the French government to copy ancient inscriptions.
As Fourmont confesses in manuscript, preserved along with the calendar, he drew over 1,500 ancient inscriptions on the tour in 1729 in Greece. In a letter to Count Maurepas, Fourmont brags that destroyed (!) Inscriptions, in order not be copied from a future browser! (…) (…)
All these manuscripts, explain the rarity of antiques today in the famed city and made him known for the destruction of ancient Sparta.
Fourmont records in 1730:
“For a month now, despite illness, I have been engaged with thirty workmen in the entire destruction of Sparta; not a day passes but I find something, and on some I have found up to twenty inscriptions. You understand, Monsieur, with what great joy, and with what fatigue, I have recovered such a great quantity of marbles. . ..”
“If by overturning its walls and temples, if by not leaving one stone on another in the smallest of its sacella, its place will be unknown in the future, 1 at least have something by which to recognise it, and that is something. I have only this means to render my voyage in the Morea illustrious, which otherwise would have been entirely useless, which would have suited neither France, nor me.”
“I am becoming a barbarian in the midst of Greece; this place is not the abode of the Muses, ignorance has driven them out, and it is that which makes me regret France, whither they have retreated. I should have liked to have more time to bring them at least more than bare nourishment, but the orders 1 have just received oblige me to finish.”
Edward Dodwell on his later visit to Sparta in 1801 reported that Fourmont was still remembered as ordering the defacement of inscriptions he had just recorded.”
Archaia Story 