Paul Perdrizet

Paul Perdrizet was sent to Cyprus to dig at Larnaca and never dug. Born at Montbéliard on 22 July 1870 and dead at Nancy on 4 June 1938⁸, he was a member of the French School at Athens when the School, on the urging of the consul Auguste Boysset and the dealer Marius Tano, sent Charles Fossey to dig at Larnaca on Tano's land. Fossey fell ill, and Perdrizet reached Cyprus in July 1896 to replace him². The permits for Larnaca and Lapithos were in Fossey's name; under Article 18 of the Ottoman law of 1874 they could not be transferred, and the French had to apply again through London^2,4.

In a letter to Edmond Pottier of the Louvre, written from Damascus on 27 September 1896, Perdrizet says he made no official excavation. Fossey had already dug without result in Tano's garden and he thought the other proposed site worthless, so he toured collections and sites and bought a few pieces on his chief's instructions¹. Homolle would not ask the Louvre to repay it, and the objects were to be a gift of the School. His two main purchases were a blue marble statue base with a 16-line Phoenician inscription, found in 1892 between Lapithos and Morphou, and a Mycenaean vase with a chariot scene from Aradippos, bought from Djabra Pierides. Boysset gave three tuff statuettes from Dali, an archaic female head from Athienou and one gold bull-head earring, and Perdrizet bought the other earring. Three crates waited in the customs store for an export permit¹.

The letter also describes the island's market. Perdrizet masks the largest collector as "M. X" and calls the dealer Zénon Malis the most tractable, and he writes scathingly of Tano, who he says sent slanderous letters about Fossey and himself¹. Merrillees adds that Boysset's conduct was cleared in Paris³. Perdrizet published inscriptions from the journey in the Bulletin de correspondance hellénique in 1896⁷.