Louis Castan

Louis Castan, known in Cyprus as Castan Bey, sold a large collection of antiquities from the Amathus and Kourion areas to the Musée Académique in Geneva between 1877 and 1897. Hermary writes that he was born in Geneva in 1814, served as a doctor in the Ottoman army in the Crimean War, and settled as a pharmacist at Limassol in 1864¹. Masson gives his dates as 1814 to 1889, while Hermary says he died in 1885 and that his wife Andromaque completed the later sales^1,2. Hermary adds that Castan's own labels, such as "Apollonia" for the sanctuary of Apollo at Kourion, preserve real findspots¹. In an earlier study of the 1890 Hoffmann sale he wrote that Castan's collection had the same origin as the Hoffmann lot, the plundering of the cemeteries of Amathus and Kourion³.

In January 1879 Falkland Warren, then at Limassol, wrote to the British Museum that Castan wished to sell his collection for 700 pounds, perhaps less, and the Trustees agreed that Charles Newton should examine it⁴. In his report of 20 May 1879 Newton wrote that he had seen the collection at Limassol and did not find it worth buying⁵. Max Ohnefalsch-Richter photographed a terracotta figure in Castan's collection the same year⁷.

The report of a link between Castan and Luigi Palma di Cesnola goes back to Castan's own statement. Nicole wrote in 1907 that hundreds of vases and terracottas had entered the Geneva museum through Castan Bey, "qui déclara les tenir de Cesnola", as Masson quotes him². Hermary, reviewing the 2004 Geneva catalogue, states that Castan supplied himself from Cesnola¹. The collection is now in the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Geneva.