Benoît Astier

A 49 cm limestone votary sent from Cyprus to Paris before 1764 is the first ancient Cypriot sculpture known to have reached a major French collection, and the man who sent it was Benoît Astier, the French consul on the island. Amandry, Hermary and Masson record that he was appointed by brevet in October 1755¹. Mariti, who was in Cyprus from 1760 to 1767, names him as the consul of France with precedence over his colleagues². Kyprianos says that until 1788 Astier presided over the French merchants' guild in Cyprus³.

Once in post he was charged by the comte de Caylus with collecting antiquities, and sent him Egyptian or Egyptianizing bronzes and the statuette¹. It is a draped male votary in limestone, dated by its modern publishers to the early sixth century BCE. Caylus published it in 1764 in his Recueil d'antiquités as found in a tomb¹. It later entered the Cabinet du Roi and is now in the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, as Dieudonné 18 and Fossati 760¹. Astier also supplied an account of the Boyaji-Oglu revolt, dated 20 December 1764³. The date of his death is not recorded.