Gaston Maspero

Gaston Camille Charles Maspero was a French Egyptologist known for popularizing the term Sea Peoples in an 1881 paper.

Gaston Maspero was born in Paris to Jewish parents of Italian origin. While at school he showed a special taste for history, and by the age of fourteen he was already interested in hieroglyphic writing. It was not until his second year at the cole normale in 1867 that Maspero met fellow Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, who was in Paris as commissioner for the Egyptian section of the Exposition universelle. Mariette gave him two newly discovered hieroglyphic texts of considerable difficulty to study, and the young selftaught scholar produced translations of them in less than a fortnight, a great feat in those days when Egyptology was still almost in its infancy. The publication of these texts in the same year established his academic reputation.

Source: Wikipedia