Michel Amandry

Michel Amandry was born on 20 September 1949 in France and became a numismatist¹⁶. From 1991 until September 2013 he directed the Département des Monnaies et Médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale, also called the Cabinet des Médailles¹⁷. He was also directeur d'études cumulant at the École pratique des hautes études, in the section for historical and philological sciences, and was made a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 2012¹⁷.

The Cabinet's first Cypriot antiquities

In 1987 Amandry published, with Antoine Hermary and Olivier Masson, an article in the Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes on the first antiquities from Cyprus to enter the Cabinet du Roi and its successor collections¹. It records a 1685 announcement by the consul B. Sauvan of an "idolle trouvée à Nicosie" and does not say where that object went¹.

The earliest piece that can be followed is a limestone votary of Archaic date, 49 cm high, catalogued as Dieudonné 18 and Fossati 760. Benoît Astier, consul appointed in October 1755, sent it to the comte de Caylus, who published it in the sixth volume of his Recueil in 1764¹. The authors treat it as the first ancient Cypriot object in a major French collection. The article then moves to 1862, when the Luynes bequest brought the Idalion bronze tablet into the Cabinet; they present that bequest as the point at which the Cypriot holdings became important¹.

The third subject is the mission of Louis de Mas Latrie to Cyprus in 1845 and 1846. Mas Latrie reached Larnaca in late October 1845, made small excavations at Dali with the Sardinian consul Marcello Cerruti, and tried without success to persuade France to buy the Sargon stele, which reached Berlin by way of Ross¹.

Coins of Cyprus

Amandry's own work is on coinage. His study of the Julio-Claudian coinage of Cyprus appeared in two parts in the Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes, on Augustus in volume 7 and on Tiberius in volume 8, both in 1987². In 1993 the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation in Nicosia published his Coinage Production and Monetary Circulation in Roman Cyprus³. His article "Le monnayage d'Amathonte revisité" appeared in volume 27 of the Cahiers in 1997, pp. 35-44, in the volume of studies for Olivier Masson⁴. With Masson he published "Notes de numismatique chypriote, VI-VIII" in the Revue numismatique in 1988, pp. 27-41, which later work on Salamis cites for the city's coinage^12,13.

From 1998 to 2015 he wrote five instalments of the "Chronique numismatique chypriote" in the Cahiers. The first appeared in volume 28 in 1998, pp. 95-102, and the second in volume 32 in 2002, pp. 403-414^6,7. The third, in volume 35 in 2005, pp. 215-234, covers the years 2002 to 2004⁹. The fourth followed in volume 38 in 2008, pp. 227-239¹⁰, and the fifth, covering 2008 to 2015, in volume 45 in 2015¹¹. Each lists the main Cypriot numismatic publications of its period together with coins that appeared in public sales and in public or private collections^8,9.

His term as director of the department ended in September 2013¹⁷.