Saulcy, Louis Felicien de Joseph Caignart°
SAULCY, LOUIS FELICIEN DE JOSEPH CAIGNART°
SAULCY, LOUIS FELICIEN DE JOSEPH CAIGNART ° (1807–1880), French numismatist, Orientalist, and archaeologist. Saulcy was born in Lille, France. He traveled in Syria and Palestine in 1850–51, 1863, and 1869, discovering the Shihan Stele and recognizing that the mound of Jericho was the site of an ancient city. In 1863 he cleared the Tombs of the Kings in Jerusalem, mistaking them for the Tombs of the House of David. This was the first archaeological excavation in the Holy Land. Although his archaeological work is now considered somewhat slipshod and amateurish, Saulcy was of some importance as a numismatist: he was the first to catalogue the coins of Palestine, noting many which have since disappeared, and left after him an extensive coin collection.
His works include Numismatique des Croisades (1847); Recherches sur la numismatique judaïque (1854); Numismatique de la Terre Sainte (1874); Voyage autour de la Mer Morte (2 vols., 1853); Voyage en Terre Sainte (2 vols., 1865; including his account of the excavation of the Tombs of the Kings in vol. 1,345–410; vol. 2, 188–9, 309–11); and Carnets de voyage en Orient, ed. by F. Bassan (1955).
[Michael Avi-Yonah]