Albert von Sack

Three Greek inscriptions from Cyprus entered the Berlin collection in 1821 as the gift of a royal chamberlain, Count Sack. The editor of the Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, Boeckh, names "Comes Sackius" as donor of CIG 2617, a base from Kition, and of CIG 2625 and CIG 2639, both from Salamis. Sack had the Kition base and CIG 2625 through the interpreter P. Angelato, who also gave him copies of the texts; CIG 2639 Boeckh describes as carried off by Sack himself. The three are in Berlin as Antike Skulpturen 1179 to 1181, entered in the 1891 catalogue as acquired in 1821¹.

Sack was a Prussian chamberlain, later styled vice-grand huntsman and Count von Sack. His dates of birth and death are not recorded. A "baron Sack", an elderly Prussian gentleman interested in natural history and travelling for his health, was with Henry Salt and William Bankes at Abu Simbel in the autumn of 1818¹. His Cyprus visit is dated only by the Piedmontese traveller Carlo Vidua, who in 1820 saw at Larnaca two stones from Salamis left in the Prussian consul's house to await shipment to Europe. Léon Fivel identifies the traveller who left them as Sack, who had stayed with the consul, visited Salamis and been helped by Angelato¹. The visit is known from Boeckh's notes and Vidua alone.

Berlin's records add gifts of coins and, in October 1826, a number of small vases, mostly lekythoi, from graves dug at Athens about 1820 at Sack's expense by the Austrian consul Georg Gropius, as Furtwängler noted¹.