Adrien de Longpérier

The preface that Adrien de Longpérier wrote in 1852 for the third edition of his Notice of the Louvre's Assyrian gallery is the first mention of a Cypriot object in the museum: a silver bowl from Idalion, given by Félicien de Saulcy. Caubet calls him the keeper of antiquities at the opening of that gallery in 1847, and a note to the preface added a second bowl². He was born in Paris in 1816 and died there in 1882¹.

Merrillees gives the history of the two bowls. The first, AO 20135, was collected by Tastu, consul at Larnaca, and given to the Louvre by Saulcy in 1851. The second, AO 20134, was bought in 1853 from Aimé Péretié, chancellor of the consulate at Beirut, and Longpérier published both that year³. In 1854 he saw three limestone heads that Saulcy had brought from Cyprus, one of them colossal, and proposed that Péretié be thanked⁹.

Longpérier corresponded with Melchior de Vogüé. In a letter of 7 October 1863 he discussed the classification of the finds from Vogüé's 1862 mission⁴. Bonato writes that he asked Vogüé for advice and support for the Louvre's Cypriot antiquities and acted as an intermediary with dealers⁹. In 1865 Vogüé arranged to buy three Phoenician inscriptions from Demetrios Pierides for 750 francs, to be sent via Marseille to Longpérier⁵. Longpérier's letter of 19 November 1864 to Nieuwerkerke backed Edmond Duthoit's 1865 mission, and Duthoit followed his instructions⁶. Wilhelm Froehner joined the Louvre's antiquities department in 1862 beside him⁸. In 1866 Longpérier published a note on the Amathus vase in the Revue archéologique^7,13.