ABSTRACT
On 13 June 1818 Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens, 25 years old, was appointed Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leiden, after a brilliant and swift career in the study of law and classics. Reuvens was born in The Hague on 22 January 1793, to Maria Susanna Garcin and Jan Everard Reuvens.1 Caspar remained the only son and lost his mother at the early age of five. His father was a jurist with a high position in society: he became councillor at the Court of Justice of Holland and Zeeland, and for a short time minister of justice. During the French administration he became president of the National Court of Justice: in this function he was ordered by Napoleon to work at the Imperial Court of Cassation in Paris. The fatherland should do its best to foster the study of archaeology by assembling the various smaller collections of archaeologica in Leiden, the centre of all future archaeological activities.
