This book, first published in 1991, is a full study of early Hellenistic coinage. It provides a history of the coinage of Alexander the Great and his successors in the Near and Middle East, and of the cities of Greece and Asia Minor. It is fully illustrated and provides a detailed and authoritative guide to the coinage of the period.
Through the ages, coins have been more than a common standard or a means of exchange between peoples for goods and services. The development of coinage gave men freedom to move beyond their communities, served as a propaganda tool for advancing armies and visually showed people the source of politics which governed their lives. Today, these same bits of metal, these ancient video disks, transmit through time information that might otherwise be lost to us. This volume comprises a selection of papers given at a conference held at the Nickle Museum of The University of Calgary, Alberta, by perhaps the most distinguished gathering of numismatists ever to assemble in North America. Topics include specific coins of the Graeco–Roman world as well as discussions on coinage and propaganda, art, architecture, and archaeology. Archaeologists, historians, coin collectors, students of the Classics, in fact, anyone who is interested in art and life as it existed in ancient times will be captivated by this collection.
The catalogue, arranged according to standard rules geographically and chronologically and based on the metal and denominations, contains 725 coins illustrated on 91 BW and 52 colour plates. In the introductory text, the history of the relevant part of the numismatic collection is presented including its beginnings, the origin of individual acquisitions and previous fate of particular private collections which came to the National Museum. Coins of the Seleucid Empire and Syrian cities are the most numerous components in the published assemblage. Thus, a fairly representative overview of Seleucid coinage was made covering the time span from Seleucus I to Antiochus XIII. The catalogue also includes several previously unpublished coins, and numerous variants of previously unpublished variants demonstrating the extraordinary variety and intensity of Seleucid coin production. The second most numerous assemblage within the published volume represent the coins of ancient Judaea from the Hasmonaeans to the Second Jewish Revolt, including the Roman Provincial issues. The coinage of ancient Phoenicia is considerably less numerous and represented mostly by the production of Aradus. The rest of the relevant territories, i.e. Mesopotamian, Armenian and Arabian issues, are presented only marginally within the published numismatic material. An important part of the publication are the results of the XRF analyses of particular coins, and their evaluation. The published numismatic material and the way of its presentation is intended to make it available to further scientific research and to develop the current knowledge on the coinage of the Middle Eastern part of the ancient world.
