Acquisition, duplicates and exchange: C. P. de Bosset’s collections from Cephalonia, Ithaca and Delphi in the British Museum

Abstract

• Charles Philippe de Bosset (1773–1845) was a Swiss soldier and British imperial official who established an extensive archaeological and numismatic collection from the Mediterranean region, particularly the Ionian Islands. His collections are now in the British Museum, the Laténium in Neuchâtel and the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Neuchâtel. This article establishes the circumstances of the British Museum’s acquisition in the early nineteenth century of its part of the de Bosset collection of coins, two bas-reliefs and a bronze. It then considers the process of removing duplicate coins from the British Museum collection through sales and exchanges by an examination of the de Bosset acquisition. Finally, it uses de Bosset’s own publication in 1815 of the coins of Cephalonia, Ithaca and Delphi as a case-study to restore archaeological provenance and a catalogue of that part of de Bosset’s collection.