Dominique Albert Edouard Tiburce Colonna-Ceccaldi

Tiburce Colonna-Ceccaldi, French consul at Larnaca from 1866, paid peasants to dig for him, and much of what they found went to the Louvre by way of its deputy curator Wilhelm Froehner. His full name is given as Dominique-Albert-Edouard Colonna-Ceccaldi, comte Tiburce⁷. Masson (1992) gives his birth year as 1833, while Masson (1990) has 1835; he died in 1892^1,2. His younger brother Georges (1840 to 1879) served at the Beirut consulate and visited him often in Cyprus. The two have been confused in print, and Masson corrects the error where McFadden takes Georges for the consul¹.

The consulate

His nomination was signed in September 1865, after the death of the previous consul, the comte de Maricourt, in July of that year¹. Tiburce reached Larnaca on 22 January 1866. He went on sick leave on 1 January 1868, with Gustave Laffon in charge, returned on 1 March 1869 and stayed to the end of December 1869, when Laffon succeeded him¹. In July 1869 he was in Constantinople, attached to the French embassy, and there received the Legion of Honour during the Empress Eugenie's visit². Cesnola, writing in 1878, says that "my friend Ceccaldi" was summoned to Constantinople for the Empress's reception and never came back⁸. A report by Tiburce on land tenure in Cyprus reached the British Foreign Office from Constantinople in January 1870⁷. By 1882 his titles were minister plenipotentiary and councillor of state⁴.

Digging at Larnaca and Dali

Like the other consuls on the island, Tiburce began in the region of the Salines at Larnaca and from 1867 turned to Dali, the site of ancient Idalion. Masson sums up the result as a very rich harvest of objects, unhappily without archaeological context¹. The work was done by peasants whom he paid, in the manner of Luigi Palma di Cesnola on a smaller scale; in October 1868, while he was in Paris, someone else continued his excavations². Cesnola says Tiburce applied for and obtained a firman and that his chief competitor was Robert Hamilton Lang⁸. Lang and the brothers are recorded as being on excellent terms¹⁰.

On 16 October 1868 he read a communication on these excavations to the Academie des Inscriptions. It lists terracotta figurines from a hill above the Salines of Larnaca; limestone statues and terracotta heads from the hill of Ambelleri at Dali, among them a life-size female statue he found himself; and the tombs opened from January 1868 at Dali, Larnaca and three other places he names Goschi, Mospiloti and Taouti. The tomb finds included animal-shaped vases, two house-models, small chariots, glass, lamps, bronzes, gold, an inscribed silver spatula and amphorae with Phoenician inscriptions³. He also wrote letters from Cyprus to the Revue archeologique, reprinted with the communication in 1882 in a volume published under Georges's name⁴.

Selling to the Louvre

Tiburce photographed his finds and offered them to museums, as Cesnola did. On 7 January 1868 he wrote from Larnaca to the Trustees of the British Museum, enclosing three photographs of limestone sculpture from the Ambelleri hills; according to Masson, the proposal had no sequel^1,2.

His main buyer was the Louvre, through Froehner. Froehner's journal, as quoted by Hellmann, records a first meeting with Tiburce in Paris on 29 July 1868, a promise on 31 August to collect for the Louvre, and the clearing and opening of Tiburce's cases in November and December 1868 (Froehner found them "only pitiful things", and one case fell into the sea). On 16 February 1869 it notes that "the Ceccaldi collection is bought at 6,000 francs"⁵. Tiburce's own letters give a second set of figures: an offer, passed on by Froehner from the Louvre's surintendant, of 250 francs for a choice of terracottas and 1,500 francs for two statues. He accepted on 14 July 1869, the statues were shipped about October 1869, and 1,750 francs had been paid by February 1870². Whether the 6,000 francs and the 1,750 francs belong to one sale or two is not recorded. He left the rest of the collection with Froehner with a free hand, kept back about twenty heads, a bronze relief and a medallion, and thought the offer from Henri Hoffmann for the remainder too low; he consulted his associate Aime Peretie about it². A glass kantharos he found in a Dali tomb in April 1869 was sold in Cyprus for a good price².

Masson connects him with two terracotta shrine models from Dali now in the Louvre (N 3293 and N 3294) and with two Phoenician amphorae^1,14. Caubet links him with the "Dame de Tricomo" (N 3497) and with Archaic terracottas and pottery for the Louvre and Saint-Germain⁶.

In Paris on 27 April 1870 he wrote to Cesnola that Melchior de Vogue, Waddington, de Saulcy and the surintendant Nieuwerkerke, had seen the photographs of Cesnola's Golgoi find, and that the Louvre would buy all of it. He warned Cesnola against the dealers Rollin, Hoffmann and Feuardent. Cesnola sent a copy of the letter to St Petersburg¹.