Cesare Mattei

Cesare Mattei of Larnaca sold Félicien de Saulcy coins and antiquities in December 1850². R. S. Merrillees says the sale included the tomb slab of Brocard de Charpigny, now in the Musée de Cluny in Paris¹. Mattei was born in 1815, the eldest of the five children of Marino Mattei, US consul at Larnaca, and Caterina Diab¹. Merrillees, following Severis, says he was involved in the antiquities business and suggests that he may have co-owned the Sargon II stele that his father held by 1846; this is Merrillees's conjecture¹. He was a different man from Jacob Mattei, the Prussian consul¹.

In 1845 the German archaeologist Ludwig Ross first called on "Herrn Cesare Mattei" at the harbour quarter of Larnaca, who owned some good coins and cut stones⁴. Saulcy's notebook records the December 1850 visit, "chez M. Mattei (Cesare)", where "de superbes médailles" were bought; Amandry, Hermary and Masson date Saulcy's stop at Larnaca to 5 December². Merrillees dates the purchase to 6 December and says it included the Charpigny slab, a 13th-century slab cut from an ancient column. The Revue archéologique of 1852 says only that Saulcy and Edouard Delessert acquired it at Larnaca, and it entered the Musée de Cluny in 1851-52 as Cl. 18 842¹.

Cesnola wrote in 1878 that after the Marquis de Vogüé's exploration of 1862, excavations at Dali were continued by the French consul and Aimé Péretié "in company with a native called Cesare Mattei, of Larnaca, on a small scale and with but indifferent success"³. Mattei's date of death is not recorded.