Louis Felicien de Saulcy

Louis Félicien Joseph Caignart de Saulcy (19 March 1807 – 4 November 1880), better known as simply Félicien or Félix de Saulcy, was a French numismatist, Orientalist, and archaeologist.

Early life Louis Felicien de Saulcy was born in Lille, France, the scion of a noble family.

Career In 1843, De Saulcy deciphered the Libyco-Berber script almost fully, thanks to the Punic-Libyan Inscription. He travelled though Syria and Palestine 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 area, misidentified Sodom and Gomorrah, and sketched the first map of Masada. He discovered the Shihan Stele east of the Dead Sea (see German Wiki article here) and identified Tell es-Sultan as the site of the ancient city of Jericho.

De Saucy conducted an early archaeological dig in the Holy Land in 1863. He excavated the Tombs of the Kings in Jerusalem, mistakenly identifying them as the tombs of the House of David.

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);

(1872): Voyage en terre sainte Vol 1. (1872): Voyage en terre sainte Vol 2. Carnets de voyage en Orient, ed. by F. Bassan (1955)