Pessoa singular

Salt, Henry

1780-1827

British diplomat and collector; he was born in Lichfield, 14 June 1780, son of Thomas S. and Alice Butt; he was trained as a portrait-painter and went to London in 1797 as a pupil of Joseph Farington, R.A., and afterwards of John Hoppner, RA; in 1802 he accompanied George Annesley, Visct. Valentia, as secretary and draughtsman, on a long tour in the East, visiting India, Ceylon, Abyssinia, and Egypt, and returned 1806; he made many drawings to illustrate Lord V.'s Voyages and Travels, 1809; he was sent by the Govt. on a mission to Abyssinia, 1809-11, and published an account, Voyage to Abyssinia, 1814; in 1815 he was appointed to succeed Missett as British Consul-General in Egypt and arrived there in 1816; he carried out much excavation in Egypt with the intention of procuring antiquities for the British Museum and in the process amassed enormous quantities on his own account; through Belzoni and Burckhardt he removed the colossal bust of Ramesses II from Thebes and presented it to the British Museum (EA 19), 1817; he employed Belzoni at Thebes and also financed his excavations in Nubia, and those of Caviglia at the Pyramids; in 1819, d'Athanasi excavated at Thebes under his direction; from 1818-21, he sent a large collection of antiquities to the British Museum, but the Trustees objected to the price demanded, and after protracted delay, they gave only £2,000 (less than the cost of excavation and transport) for the collection, but rejected the finest piece - the sarcophagus of Sety I ¬which was subsequently bought by Sir John Soane for his museum for £2,000; in private Salt attempted to place blame for the high excavation costs on Belzoni's extravagance; he had better luck with his second collection, formed 1819-24, which was reported upon by Champollion and bought by the King of France for £10,000; his third collection was sold at Sotheby's 29 June-8 July 1835; it had been formed 1824-7, and was auctioned in 1,283 lots for £7,168; many objects were bought by the British Museum; an anonymous sale of Egyptian antiquities held at Sotheby's, 15-16 March 1833, has also been attributed to Salt's estate (258 lots); besides a rather tedious poem on the Nile, Salt published an Essay on Dr. Young's and M Champollion's Phonetic System of Hierog!yphics, with some additional discoveries, etc., 1825; FRS, 1812; FLS; his papers and drawings are in the British Museum and there copies of some of these in the Griffith Institute, Oxford; he died at Desuke village near Alexandria, 30 Oct. 1827, and was buried in Alexandria.

• Who Was Who in Egyptology (4th ed. 2012), 484-5 fig. (portrait).