Jean-Vincent Scheil

Father Jean-Vincent Scheil was a French Dominican scholar and Assyriologist. He is credited as the discoverer of the Code of Hammurabi in Persia. In 1911 he came into possession of the Scheil dynastic tablet and first translated it. After being ordained in 1887, he took courses in Egyptology and Assyriology at the École des Hautes Études, and was a student at the Collège de France, where he was a pupil of Assyriologist Julius Oppert. In 1890/91 as a member of the French Archaeological Mission of Cairo, he took part in excavations at Thebes. In 1892 he conducted excavations near Baghdad for the Ottoman Imperial Museum, followed by work in Constantinople, where he was tasked with classifying and drafting a catalog of Assyrian, Chaldean and Egyptian antiquities of the museum.