His brother, Michel Fourmont (1690-1746), was also a member of the Academy of Inscriptions, and professor of the Syriac language in the Royal College, and was sent by the government to copy inscriptions in Greece.
Nichols at an early kept antiquarian journals and copied inscriptions and epitaphs.
Wood began systematically to copy monumental inscriptions and to search for antiquities in the city and neighbourhood.
T. A. B. Spratt visited the site for two days in 1842 to copy inscriptions and draw a plan.
Pengolod copied and gave extracts from, various inscriptions and books that were still extant in his day.
Detailed examination has proved that he not merely claimed to have copied Roman inscriptions that had never existed, and amended others in an arbitrary fashion, but that he deliberately forged documents to push back the origin of his family to the 10th century.
Wherever he went he sought out learned men, examined libraries, and copied inscriptions.
Artists from the late 15th century drew the ruins in the Forum, antiquaries copied inscriptions in the 16th century, and a tentative excavation was begun in the late 18th century.
Around 1832 John Gardner Wilkinson copied inscriptions of a coffin naming a queen with the same name.
In 1680, Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbheartaigh, the historian from County Galway, saw the cross (which he referred to as the "Abbot of Cong's Cross") and copied inscriptions from it.