Honoré Théodoric d'Albert, duc de Luynes

The bronze tablet of Idalion passed in 1850 to Honoré Théodoric d'Albert, duc de Luynes. Peasants had found it on the Ambelleri hill at Dali, and Luynes acquired it that year^2,5. Masson says that Aimé Péretié, long chancellor of the French consulate at Beirut, procured it for him⁴. It is now in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, bronzes 2297².

Luynes was born in Paris on 15 December 1802 and died in Rome on 15 December 1867¹. In 1852 he printed privately, in folio, Numismatique et inscriptions cypriotes, the first attempt to read the Cypriot script. Cesnola and Birch, and Lang, say that his reading of one frequent group of signs as "Salamis" and another as "Amathus" wrecked the decipherment^6,7. Cesnola added that Luynes's published alphabet had 34 letters against his own 82¹¹. Luynes also supported Röth's memoir on the tablet of 1855⁶, and translated Ross's description of the Spilaion tis Reginas at Kouklia, with its plan, for his book⁸.

Colonna-Ceccaldi wrote that of fourteen silver bowls found at Dali, thirteen were melted and the fourteenth, bought by Péretié and passed to Luynes, was, as he believed, in the Bibliothèque impériale⁹. Caubet records that the Louvre's silver bowls AO 20134 and AO 20135 were given by Saulcy and by Luynes respectively, while Merrillees reverses the attribution for AO 20135^2,9. Vogüé wrote that the Louvre's Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions came wholly from gifts of Luynes, Rey, Waddington and himself¹⁰.

Amandry, Hermary and Masson give the entry of his collection into the Cabinet des Médailles as a bequest in 1862, a date that precedes his death³. Babelon published its Greek coins as the Catalogue de la collection de Luynes in 1924³.