Caspar Reuvens

Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens, Latinized Casparus Iacobus Christianus Reuvensius, ( born January 22, 1793 in The Hague, † July 26, 1835 in Rotterdam ) was a Dutch antiquity watchers. He is considered the founder of classical archeology in the Netherlands and was the founding director of the Museum Antiquarum in Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden the later.

Caspar Reuvens attended school in Amsterdam and then studied law in Paris, where he was in 1813 also received his doctorate. In 1815 he was at the University of Harderwijk (Gymnasium Reich Athaneum ) Associate Professor of Greek, Latin and history. In the summer of that year he traveled to Germany, where he was subjected formative impressions. At the University of Göttingen, he was particularly impressed by the library of the altphilologischen seminar and academic art collection. In 1818 he moved to the closure of the school Reich Athaneum Harderwijk as an associate professor of archeology at the University of Leiden. He was the first professor whose work area was referring exclusively to the archeology. There he visited in 1822, the year of his marriage to the novelist Louise Sophie Blussé, Karl Otfried Müller. In Leiden he built the museum Antiquarum and oriented themselves to this museum concepts of Taylor Combe and Ennio Quirino Visconti, whom he had met when traveling to England and Italy. Reuvens was limited for the Antiquarum not like many other collectors to works of Greek- Etruscan-Roman art of antiquity, but also reached beyond. He collected works of Egyptian art, but also Hindu- Buddhist sculptures from Java, where he meant to recognize a common over India Hellenistic heritage. Reuvens not only collected Aegyptiaca, he occupied himself inspired by the work of Jean -François Champollion with ancient Egypt. He is thus one of the pioneers of Papyrology. Even as a field archaeologist, he could put his excavations in the Forum Hadriani in Rotterdam 1827-1833 by newly developed methods accents.

At the age of 42 years, the father of three children died of a heart attack and was buried in Leiden. His daughter Maria Ereardina is mother of the biologist Hugo de Vries. Reuvens successor as director of the museum was Conrad Leemans.

The archaeological department of the Leiden University has its seat today at Reuvens named after Reuvensplaats ( Reuvensplatz ). The Leiden Study of the classical archaeologist was in his honor KAD Reuvens called. Every year at each other's places in the Netherlands the Reuvensdagen ( Reuvenstag ), an annual archaeological conference conducted.