La série carthaginoise du musée de Gołuchów (Pologne)

• Main Authors: Inga Głuszek, Michał Krueger
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme 2019-07-01
• Series: Les Nouvelles de l’Archéologie
• Subjects: Carthage; Tunis; Tunisia; Phoenician and Punic Antiquities; Alfred Louis Delattre; Izabella Czartoryska
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/nda/5701
• ISSN: 0242-7702; 2425-1941

Alfred Louis Delattre (1850-1932) was leading the mission of White Fathers in Carthage. He began archaeological excavations in the vicinity of Carthage in order to discover ancient traces of Christianity in North Africa. He collected artefacts for the Saint-Louis Museum created in 1875 which became the National Museum of Carthage in 1956. He also sent artefacts outside of Tunisia. As a result of these donations, ancient objects from Carthage can be found, among others, in Polish collections. At the end of 19th century, Izabela Działyńska de domo Czartoryska, an owner of the Gołuchów castle in Greater Poland region, received from father Delattre a group of Phoenician and Punic artefacts. I. Działyńska already had a vast collection of ancient artefacts. Two letters discovered in the archive of the National Museum in Poznań written by A. L. Delattre can shed new light on details of the donation from Africa. According to the letters, the artefacts, pottery and a stela with a representation of Tanit were sent in two boxes as an expression of A. L. Delattre’s gratitude for her donations towards the promotion of missionary activity. Indeed, in the Gołuchów account book from May 1895 is a short note which confirms the words of A. L. Delattre. As it could be deduced from the contents of the second letter, some of the antiquities were damaged or destroyed during their transport to Paris. Father Delattre proposes to replace broken antiquities with objects in good condition.The integration of those 16 Carthaginian atrefacts, partly looted during the Second World War, allowed the princess to represent in Gołuchów (now branch of the National Museum in Poznań) a new, important territory in the history of the Mediterranean.