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Charles Philippe de Bosset (1773-1845) was a Swiss soldier and British imperial official, who became Governor of Cephalonia in 1810. During his time on the Ionian Islands and elsewhere in the Mediterranean, he built up a large collection of Greek coins and archaeological material. This paper focuses on the numismatic collection which was part donated and part sold to the British Museum in 1815-1818.
The de Bosset collection includes coins from excavations on Ithaca, and Greek coins from a wide variety of mints across the Mediterranean. The origins of these coins have been difficult to trace in many cases due to the complex nature of their acquisition at the British Museum. This paper therefore sets out the evidence for de Bosset's original collection and the coins in the British Museum today.
