Charles Gaillardot

In January 1862 a doctor at Saida handed Melchior de Vogüé's mission a firman, excavation tools and advice on hiring labourers for digging in Cyprus. Charles Gaillardot had served in Mehmet Ali's army in Syria before becoming medical director of the Saida hospital, and he accompanied Ernest Renan as archaeologist¹. Bonato dates that to 1860; the editors of Duthoit's letters place his part in Renan's mission in 1861, and add that he took part in de Saulcy's expedition of 1863 to 1864⁴.

At Renan's request he gave Vogüé the firman for Cyprus and the excavation tools^1,3. In a letter of 20 January 1862 he told Vogüé that Edmond Duthoit, Vogüé's architect, had arrived the day before and been shown the Phoenician necropolis; that the tools would be shared; and that Renan's contract with the Abela family was enclosed. He advised wages of 4 piastres a day for refugees and gangs of 60 men, 15 with pickaxes, 20 with shovels and 25 carrying baskets, and suggested fires at the mouths of tombs¹. Bonato judges the advice thin and medical in inspiration, and notes that Duthoit, left to himself, "made big holes" at Dali¹.

Gaillardot is not recorded as working in Cyprus himself. In 1865 he was sanitary doctor at Alexandria, from where he passed on Renan's praise of Duthoit⁴.