Download PDF | Eleni Lianta - Late Byzantine Coins 1204 - 1453 in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford-Spink & Son (2009).
332 Pages
PREFACE
The present work constitutes the catalogue of the Late Byzantine coins in the Ashmolean Museum. The Oxford collection is particularly valuable as a source of information, and as a stepping stone towards further research. Firstly, it is a systematic university collection and includes Simon Bendall's collection which was deliberately put together for scientific purposes by a leading scholar and collector who created a system of reference for Palaeologan coins. Secondly, it is a highly comprehensive collection, containing sequences of issues and specimens of all the best known types, including a respectable number of the rarest types.
Thirdly, it consists of coins that come from different modern and historical sources, permitting the undertaking of different methods of examination. For all these reasons, analysis of the collection offers important opportunities to trace developments in the material content, denominations and iconography of Late Byzantine coinage, as well as shedding light on places and methods of production and raising new and intriguing questions for the study of Late Byzantine numismatics. The Ashmolean collection increases the general database of Byzantine numismatic material available for the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; adds to the photographic dossier of hoard-coins, which have previously been very badly illustrated or not illustrated at all; provides a wider coverage of types for the period 1204-1261 than Dumbarton Oaks Catalogue (DOC) IV, which, in the main, contains coins from the Harvard University collection; and brings to light a series of unpublished overstrikes, which aids in arranging the coinage in a proper chronological sequence.
The catalogue of the Late Byzantine coins in the Ashmolean was developed through a detailed classification of the coins and with descriptions of their physical character. Part A of the Introduction is concerned with the provenance of the coins that now form the collection, while Part B presents the method by which I incorporated Bendall's collection into the existing Ashmolean coins, and gives brief information about the collection's size and its metallic and typological content. Part C classifies the coins in the Ashmolean according to metals, mints, denominations, weight structures, imperial authorities, religious, imperial and other iconographic types and varieties, and inscriptions-monograms, analyses a number of overstrikes, and concludes with the presentation of new issues accommodated in the collection.
This work has greatly benefited from DOC IV and V, which have marked an important advancement in our understanding of the Byzantine currency of the twelfth-fifteenth centuries. The discovery of new numismatic finds, the re-examination of the accumulated evidence, and the progress of current research, however, sometimes re-arrange the existing material and suggest different lines of inquiry, which will enable us to build on and beyond the foundation laid by DOC IV and V. Even such a great achievement as DOC IV and V should not be allowed to become fossilized. Likewise, it should be noted that new finds can quickly make the suggestions and conclusions presented in this book outdated, and create opportunities for a different or more refined analysis.
The present book is a slightly revised version of one third of my doctoral thesis, which was entitled Byzantine Coinage AD 1204-1453: Some Problems in Monetary Affairs (University of Oxford, 2005). I am grateful to the supervisor of the thesis, Prof. Nicholas Mayhew, for his invaluable help in developing the dissertation. I am also indebted to the examiners of the thesis, Prof. Michael Metcalf and Dr. Vasso Penna, as well as to Dr. James Howard-Johnston, Dr Marlia Mango, Dr. Catherine Holmes, Prof. Elizabeth Jeffreys, and Prof. Vassos Karageorghis, who have always been ready with their time and advice. My special thanks go to Dr. David Gwynn, who scrutinized the typescript carefully, and for his numerous helpful comments and suggested improvements to the text. I am also grateful to Dumbarton Oaks’ summer programme in Byzantine Numismatics and Sigillography (1-26 July 2002) for invaluable input, and for generously releasing to me the special numismatic fonts used in the catalogue.
The writing of this study was supported financially by a number of sources. I would like to thank the А.С. Leventis Foundation for awarding me an educational grant, and the Propondis Foundation for giving me a scholarship. Special thanks are also due to Exeter College for awarding me the Amelia Jackson Senior Studentship, as well as additional financial assistance. Grants made available from the Ireland and T.W. Greene Fund (Craven Committee, University of Oxford), and from the Meyerstein Fund (School of Archaeology, University of Oxford) have also been greatly appreciated.
I am greatly indebted to Dr. Bruno Callegher (University of Trieste), Dr. Vera Guruleva (Coin Department, Hermitage), Katerina Hristovska (Numismatic Cabinet, National Bank of FYROM), Dr. Ernest Oberlünder-Tárnoveanu (Coin Room, National History Museum of Romania), and Dr. Vesna Radié (National Museum, Belgrade) for providing me with important published material. I am also grateful to Prof. Slobodan Ćurčić for his inspired suggestions.
I wish to accord a special note of thanks to Maria Mili, Dimitri Korobeinikov, Doug Nicol, Tim Crafter, Fatih Onur, Anthi Papagiannaki, Mirry and Ariel Ezrachi for their encouragement and assistance. І am grateful to Nicholas Rossicopoulos for many thought-provoking discussions. I would also like to thank my uncle, the late Steve Tavouksis, who bought my first numismatic book, A. Burnett’s /nterpreting the Past: Coins, while I was still an undergraduate at the Aristotle University of Thessalonica.
I am particularly grateful to Simon Bendall, who has been a priceless source of information both through his published work and the extensive correspondence we have exchanged since 1999. Mr. Bendall decided to offer his collection to the Ashmolean Museum, because in the University the collection would be used as an instrument for teaching and would stimulate interest in research, With his contribution and encouragement, I have put myself at the service of the collection by making and introducing this Catalogue. I am especially indebted to him for his unreserved guidance and support throughout the years, for his careful reading of this study and for his extremely helpful remarks. He has my enduring thanks!
Last, but not least, I would like to thank whole-heartedly my parents, Michail and Nopi, and my brother, Grigoris, for their love and priceless support.
INTRODUCTION
A. Background to the Collection’
The Ashmolean collection of Late Byzantine coins consists of two groups. The first and smaller group forms the original Ashmolean collection. In autumn of 1999 the Ashmolean Museum acquired the second and larger group of coins formed by Simon Bendall (pictured below); who assembled it systematically over a period of nearly thirty years. More specifically, the origin of the ‘Bendall’ Byzantine collection goes back to 1954, when Bendall acquired his first Byzantine coin, a billon trachy of Isaac II. The exceptionally wide variety of types and provenances of this collection results mainly from the fact that as a professional commercial numismatist Bendall was able to establish a wide network of contacts not only with other coin dealers and collectors, but also with scholars interested in the field. He attended every International Numismatic Congress held between the late 1960s and the late 1980s, as well as the annual Byzantine symposia held in the UK. In those years, Bendall was, perhaps, the only person specializing entirely in the coinage of the last 250 years of the Byzantine Empire. Hence, he was able to acquire coins from many dealers, collectors and friends both in Europe and in the USA. Moreover, from the early 1970s until the mid- 1980s Byzantine coins were very inexpensive, and Bendall acquired the bulk of his collection at that time, even coins in poor condition if they were not represented in his collection, while he used any duplicates he acquired for the purpose of exchange. In this way he was able to acquire a few rare coins from both Dumbarton Oaks and the British Museum - in the days when museums made exchanges - and to make other exchanges with various collectors, some of whom, such as R.N. Bridge and J. Wilkinson, not being interested in the later Byzantine coinage, gave Bendall a number of coins. Today, out of 641 coins published by Bendall in 1988; 285 rest in the Ashmolean collection. Unfortunately, while Bendall was living in Los Angeles in 1989, all his Palaeologan coins were stolen with the exception of those of the reign of Michael VIII and certain others.' In 1991 Bendall was able to recover approximately twenty per cent of his stolen coins, and between 1990 and 2000 he was also able to add considerably to his collection. The expansion of the Ashmolean collection continued in 2001, when the Ashmolean Museum purchased some individual Late Byzantine coins from A.H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd, and from Bendall, who still continues to collect.
To date there are four publications that describe and illustrate specimens of the material presently under discussion: Bendall's Private Collection of Palaeologan Coins, Hendy's Catalogue of the Byzantine Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection, Metcalf’s Coinage of the Crusades and the Latin East in the Ashmolean Museum, and Sear’s Byzantine Coins and their Values. In addition to these works, there are also a series of articles published in numismatic journals illustrating specimens that now belong to the Ashmolean coin collection. Hitherto, however, there has been no Ashmolean catalogue of its Byzantine coins.
B. The New Collection’s Size and Content The identification, sorting and labeling of the entire joint collection followed the lines and classification of coins established by DOC IV and V, except where those classifications were in need of amplification.
The coins listed in the Catalogue cover the years 1204-1453, and amount to 1128 specimens, most of them in fine condition. The majority of the specimens have not previously been published, and in a few instances coins in the Catalogue confirm reports of the only one or two similar coins known to numismatists. The collection is representative of the original currency used in the period 1204-1453. It is particularly rich in billon and copper coins, with an exceptionally good coverage of imperial authorities, dates and mints. Moreover, it musters a considerable proportion of the currently recorded types and varieties: it includes 363 types out of 640 recorded in DOC IV and V, with a wider coverage than DOC IV of types of the period 1204-1261. The Ashmolean coin collection also includes several specimens of the same type, so that designs and inscriptions can more easily be pieced together and identified.
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