Louis Felicien de Saulcy (1807–1880) was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 numismatist, Orientalist

Oriental studies

Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...

, and archaeologist.

Louis Felicien de Saulcy was born in Lille, France, the scion of a noble family. He traveled though Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 and Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 in 1850–51, 1863, and 1869. On his first trip to Palestine in 1850, searching for something of interest "in a place fraught with danger," he toured the Dead Sea

Dead Sea

The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...

 area, misidentified Sodom

Sodom

- Places :* Sodom and Gomorrah, infamous Biblical cities* Sodom, Ontario, Canada* Mount Sodom or Mount Sedom, Israel* Mount Sudum and valley near Lund Khwar, Pakistan Lund Khwar#Holy war against the Sikh* Winschoten or Sodom, Netherlands...

 and Gomorrah

Gomorrah

Gomorrah or Gomorra may refer to:* Sodom and Gomorrah, infamous biblical cities* Gomorrah , by Roberto Saviano** Gomorrah , based on the book* Operation Gomorrah, the Bombing of Hamburg in World War II in July 1943...

, and sketched the first map of Masada

Masada

Masada is the name for a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel, on top of an isolated rock plateau, or horst, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada is best known for the violence that occurred there in the first century CE...

. He discovered the Shihan Stele

Stele

A stele , also stela , is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected for funerals or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased or living — inscribed, carved in relief , or painted onto the slab...

 and identified Tell es-Sultan as the site of the ancient city of Jericho

Jericho

Jericho ; is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of more than 20,000. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently...

. De Saucy conducted the first archaeological dig in the Holy Land

Holy Land

The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...

 in 1863. He excavated the Tombs of the Kings

Tombs of the Kings (Jerusalem)

The Tombs of the Kings are a collection of rock cut tombs in East Jerusalem, 820 meters north of the Old City "al-Quds" walls in Al-Shaykh Jarrah suburb ....

 in Jerusalem, mistakenly identifying them as the Tombs of the House of David

David

David was the second king of the united Kingdom of Israel according to the Hebrew Bible and, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor of Jesus Christ through both Saint Joseph and Mary...

. He discovered the sarcophagus of Queen Helena of Adiabene

Helena of Adiabene

Helena of Adiabene was queen of Adiabene and wife of Monobaz I. With her husband she was the mother of Izates II and Monobaz II. She died about 56 CE. Her name and the fact that she was her husband's sister indicate a Hellenistic origin...

, although he believed the bones inside, wrapped in shrouds with golden embroidery, were the remains of the wife of a king of Judea from the First Temple period, possibly Zedekiah or Jehoash. De Saulcy was forced to suspend the dig when the news that human bones were being dug up drew the ire of the Jewish community of Jerusalem. The sarcophagus and other findings were sent to France and displayed at the Louvre

Louvre

The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

.

De Saulcy's archaeological work is now considered amateurish, but he is recognized as an important numismatist. He was the first to catalogue the coins of Palestine and amassed a large coin collection.

Published works

• 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);
• Carnets de voyage en Orient, ed. by F. Bassan (1955)