1996 COIN CABINET

THE COIN CABINET

The year's accessions totaled 1,458 objects, and most were given by previous donors to the collection. Particularly welcome were those intended to fill recognized gaps in the collection, which will be highlighted in the departmental reports. The collection depends upon generosity for more than its growth, however. Existing holdings are constantly in the process of rearrangement and reattribution, usually by specialist volunteers. David Jen, Kenneth MacKenzie, Jyoti Rai, and Hyla Troxell have provided assistance in various areas of the East Asian and Greek collections, and we are grateful to them. In addition the documentation of the collection proceeds. Ted Withington has almost single-handedly completed entry of the Ptolemaic coins in our database, while the medals and modern departments have benefited from the part-time work of Noel Franklin, Samuel Johnson, and Daniel Metcalf. Diana Whitecage, a Bennington intern, assisted in the cataloguing of Greek and Roman coins of Spain during January and February.

Our efforts to take numismatics outside the building also depend on devoted collaborators. In March, with the Chicago Coin Club, the ANS co-sponsored the "Science in Numismatics" colloquium in Chicago. In May the University of California at Berkeley once again provided a venue for a day-long symposium on coinage of Asia Minor in antiquity, co-sponsored with the San Francisco Ancient Coin Society and the ANS. The latter event was timed to coincide with the opening of the exhibit "Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar," which was then at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco following its opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This exhibit included 11 coins from the ANS. Some 17 coins from our collection are now included in the Met's new Greek galleries, and further loans are contemplated for the future. We hope that this and the increased loan activity reflected in the reports below are a sign of widening appreciation of the significance of coins to the history of art and culture.
METCALF

GREEK

This year the Greek Department acquired 103 coins by purchase and through the generous gifts of Harlan J. Berk, Ben and Caroline Damsky, Charles A. Hersh, Frank L. Kovacs III, Edoardo A. Levante, Richard G. McAlee, Mark and Lottie Salton in memory of Felix Schlessinger, and Dr. Arnold-Peter C. Weiss.

Among the most interesting gifts is a light tetrobol of the Macedonian king Perdiccas II (fig. 1), donated by Charles A. Hersh. The obverse shows a free horse galloping to right in a very fine style. Doris Raymond, Macedonian Regal Coinage to 413 B.C., NNM 126 (1953), p. 153, even compared it to the horses of the Parthenon frieze. The reverse bears a crested helmet to right, with neck and cheek pieces in an incuse square, framed in a double linear square and the inscription (greek)GERDIK. This is the only series with the name of the king, and most of the coins of Perdiccas have no inscription, except for the preceding series that sometimes has a P below the horse. The new tetrobol belongs to the last issue of Perdiccas II and was hitherto unrepresented in the collection, SNGANS 8 (1994), Perdiccas II, 37-63. The coins of the early Macedoniam kings of the fifth century were first studied by Doris Raymond who thoroughly published all the varieties known at that time. In 1989 a hoard of at least 223 tetrobols came to light in eastern Macedonia, CH 8 (1994), 87. Charles A. Hersh published it in "A Fifth-Century Circulation Hoard of Macedonian Tetrobols," Mnemata: Papers in Memory of Nancy M. Waggoner, ed. W. E. Metcalf (New York, 1991), pp. 3-20, and added numerous dies to the corpus of Raymond. The hoard contained only four coins with the name of Perdiccas. This new tetrobol does not belong to the hoard. It is dated to 415-413 B.C.

A small bronze coin of particular historical importance (fig. 2) was acquired by purchase. It has on the obverse the head of a bearded man with moustache and curly hair and under the neck truncation the inscription TISSA. The reverse shows a cult statue on a round base, wearing a flat polos on her head, both arms are stretched forward and from them hang two long fillets. To the left is the inscription ASTYPH, the ethnic of Astyra. Four cities of that name which issued coins in the fourth century are known from the sources, one in northern Troas, one in Mysia, one in the Aeolis, and one in Caria. This issue of bronze coins must have been issued in Astyra in Mysia, known for its sanctuary of Artemis Astyrene. But it is the inscription of the obverse which is of particular importance, TISSA for the Persian satrap Tissaphernes and this is the first time his name appears on a coin in Greek. This issue was totally unknown until the discovery of a hoard found in 1985, see H. A. Cahn, "Tissaphernes in Astyra," AA 1985, pp. 587-94, and the mint unrepresented in our holdings. Names of other satraps on coins, like Pharnabazos or Orontas, see Cahn, p. 590, n. 14, have been known for a long time but for Tissaphernes only his portrait had been recognized on other coins. Tissaphernes died in 395 B.C. which gives us a terminus ante quem for the bronze coins. Astyra must have started striking bronze coins at the end of the fifth century, like many other cities of Asia Minor.

A rare late hellenistic tetradrachm of Elaeusa Sebaste in Cilicia (fig. 3) was acquired in part by purchase and in part as gift. The obverse shows a turreted head of Tyche and on the reverse is a female goddess, resting her right hand on a tiller, and to the left is an aphlaston and the inscription ELAIOYSION THS IERAS KAI AYTONOMOY with monograms in the outer and inner left field. It must have been issued after 95-94 B.C., when Seleucus VI struck coinage at Elaeusa. On the other hand some of the monograms on the tetradrachms of Elaeusa are shared with Seleucia ad Calycadnos which probably indicates that the same magistrates continued to be active in Elaeusa after the mint of Seleucia closed in 90 B.C. Tigranes took over the city in 83 B.C. and at that point the autonomous mint ceased to exist, so the coins can be fairly closely dated. In MN 33 (1988), pp. 71-89, A. Houghton and S. Bendall published a hoard of tetradrachms from Aegeae which included one tetradrachm of Elaeusa. At that time there were only four specimen known. Today there must be at least seven.

A fairly rare and beautifully preserved bronze of Gallienus was bought from Sternberg Sale 29, 30-31 Oct. 1995, 508 (fig. 4). The portrait of the obverse is particularly fine. The reverse shows a naked athlete, standing facing, putting his right hand in an urn and holding a palm in his left hand, surrounding this is the inscription CER SAC CAP OEC ISEL HEL for certamina sacra capitolina oecumenica iselastica heliopolitana, "the games of Heliopolis are declared holy, Capitoline, ecumenical, and equal." This is one of the many provincial coins referring to games but this particular scene is not so common, see H. Gaebler, "Die Losurne in der Agonistik," ZfN 39 (1929), pp. 271-312, esp. p. 281, n. 12. D. A. O. Klose and G. Stumpf, Sport, Spiele, Sieg. MYnzen und Gemmen der Antike (Staatliche Munzsammlung Munich, 1996). It illustrates the moment before the actual competition when the athletes who were going to fight in pairs for wrestling and for the pancration had to be selected. This complicated procedure is described by the second century A.D. author Lucian in one of his Dialogues (Hermotimus, par. 40) who relates that pairs of lots were marked with the letters alpha, beta, etc., and the wrestlers and pancratists had to draw their lot from an urn in order to be matched fairly and under strict supervision, as shown on our coin.

The Greek department greatly benefited from the help of Marilyn Higbee, the 1995 Schwartz fellow, Sarah Cox, research assistant to the Margaret Thompson Chair, and from its faithful volunteers Hyla A. Troxell and Frederic G. Withington. I am very grateful for their continued interest and assistance.

ARNOLD-BIUCCHI

ROMAN AND BYZANTINE

Acquisitions in the department followed a pattern familiar in recent years as regular donors provided most of the new material, which consisted mainly of Roman imperial and provincial issues.

Last year Ben and Caroline Damsky gave four denarii of the Civil Wars of A.D. 68; this year two more followed. One of these is a virtual replica of a Spanish issue of Augustus with reverse DIVVS IVLIVS flanking a comet, apparently intended to represent the sidus Iulium (fig. 5). These coins are difficult to isolate in hoard reports, since their description is identical to that of their prototypes, but the style gives them away for coins produced outside the mainstream.

The Damskys also gave two other outstanding coins. The first is the fourth known cistophorus of Titus with reverse Capitolium (fig. 6). Since the type is continued in the initial issue of Domitian, it is probable that these (and all other) cistophori of Titus were minted late in his reign. Our coin shares both dies with specimens in the British Museum (1946-7-4-1, not in BMC) and Paris (Leu 50, 25 Apr. 1990, 295). The fourth specimen, in Bern, is from different dies.

The "Stadium" aureus of Septimius Severus (fig. 7) was published by Mr. Damsky himself in AJN 2 (1990), pp. 77-105. That study should be consulted for full details, but it is worth remarking in a general way on the attention paid to detail by Severan die engravers at Rome. The aurei and bronze coins are in this respect far superior to contemporary denarii.
Other coins acquired during the year are more modest but still of numismatic significance. The Roman curator took pleasure in purchasing a cistophorus of Hadrian with reverse legend IOVIS OLVMPIVS EPHESI (fig. 8), which formed the subject of his first publication ever, W. E. Metcalf, "Hadrian, Iovis Olympius," Mnemosyne 27 (1974), pp. 59-66. The coin is best read as part of the celebration of Hadrian's arrival at Ephesus in winter 128/9 and provides a chronological anchor for the whole series of cistophori.

Another purchase was a denarius of Pertinax that has been attributed to the mint of Alexandria, largely on grounds of style (fig. 9). It is a truism, but true, that the scarcest coins of Pertinax are his silver ones, and the existence of a mint outside Rome has only recently been recognized.

George His of San Antonio, TX, donated an unpublished dupondius of Gordian III, which fills out an issue of the VIRTVS AVG type dated by Mattingly to A.D. 238/9 (fig. 10, compare RIC 259 for the sestertius and as). Later in the year Mr. His donated a further six coins of Gordian III (an emperor in whose coins he has specialized for many years) that were otherwise missing from the ANS.

Thomas Tesoriero of Brooklyn gave a sestertius of Volusian that seems to be unpublished (fig. 11). The coin has the reverse AETERNITAS AVG/S - C with Aeternitas standing left and holding a phoenix on globe in her right hand. Aeternitas reverses often occur in the context of deification, but that cannot be the case here and the reference is obscure.

For their generosity during the year we thank Richard Beleson, Raymond Huckles, Herbert Kreindler, Richard G. McAlee, Mark and Lottie Salton, and the estate of Charles K. Panish.

METCALF

ISLAMIC AND ASIAN

This year's accessions included an extraordinary number of rare and interesting coins by gift and purchase. William B. Warden, Jr., donated an interesting first-century drachm of the Sakas or Sakaraukae (the same, apparently, as the people known to the Greeks as Scythians) who gave their name to the eastern Iranian province Sakastan (in Arabic, Sijistaon, and today more commonly Soostaon; fig. 12). The drachm imitates a Parthian issue including an imitated Graeco-Bactrian counterstamp. Warden has always been a generous friend of the Islamic and South Asian departments, but his gifts this year have been extraordinary in number and rarity, including also a rare drachm of the Sasanian Varhran II, in Gobl's catalogue as type I/2 (fig. 13); an Abbasid dirham of Nasibin, 323; a Kakwayhid Isbahan dirham of 410, a unique presentation medallion (fig. 14); a Rasulid dirham of the very rare mint al-Dumluwa in Yemen, dated 642 (fig. 15); and a strange Qajar copper piece from Yazd, 1231.

Early in the year, we received a small collection of seven gold coins and a pendant formerly the property of Princess Nilufer, a great-grandaughter of the Ottoman sultan Mehmet V who was married to a younger son of the Nizam of Hyderabad. The marriage ended in divorce in 1947, after which the Princess met and married an American diplomat, Mr. Edward Pope. He and his second wife gave us the late Princess's few coins just before his own death this year. They included a Hyderabad ashrafi of 1368, 39, a date (equivalent to 1947) which is not listed in the standard catalogues of that state's coinage and was probably one of a very few examples distributed to members of the royal family (fig. 16).

An interesting coin acquired by purchase turns out to be the second example in our collection (fig. 17), though the first (fig. 18) was not fully identified until this year's accession. The dirham, dated 355, has the name of Justan b. Sharmazir, an exceedingly obscure figure in the tenth-century history of Adharbayjan who is mentioned in Miskawayh's general Islamic history as master of Urmiyya. Although only the first two letters of the mint name alif-ra' can be made out by comparing the two ANS coins, Ardabil (not Urmiyya) seems to be the correct identification, based on examples in the collections of the late Raymond Hebert and Tubingen University. Apparently Justan intervened in Ardabil's affairs during a chaotic year in which the city was taken by force at least three times. Also by purchase, the Society acquired a unique dirham of Barda'a, 293 (fig. 19), and an exceedingly rare dirham of Irminiyya, 315 (fig. 20), both with the name of the Sajid warlord Yusuf b. Diwdad.

Until now, the Society had no coins of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was founded as long ago as 1979, but thanks to gifts this year from Siamak Adhami, Touraj Daryaee, and Martin Huth, we now have a good representation of the nation's recent coins and paper money. Dr. Huth's gift included a valuable official album of all current issue notes. Examples of the earlier more militant paper money would be welcome additions to the collection.

Charles K. Panish's name is one that appeared constantly in the Islamic department's annual reports from the sixties until his "retirement" in 1989. Over the years he gave us the cream of his collection, now constituting more than half of our holdings of Indian state coinages in the time of the British, for example. We were saddened to hear of his death in April of this year. The remains of his collection, 526 coins, came to us along with his books which are described in the report of the Library.

David Jen, who has provided excellent service as a volunteer worker on Chinese coins (re-organizing our entire cabinet of round cash coins, integrating various accessions, and putting all in order according to standard catalogues) has also made several donations of coins missing from our collection, among which a rare bao qing yuan bao copper of the Nan Song emperor Li Zong issued for a few months at the beginning of his reign with the title Bao Qing (fig. 21). The material of the coin, iron, indicates that it is an issue of Shaanxi province.

BATES

MEDIEVAL

Though the medieval department has received coins this year from various sources, the most important acquisition is a collection of 94 coins of the Austrian mint of Salzburg and related issues, purchased thanks to a generous donation from Chester L. Krause. The focus on Salzburg this year is particularly appropriate in that it was 1,000 years ago, on May 28, 996, that the German emperor Otto III gave a privilege to Bishop Hartwig of Salzburg creating what was to become one of the most important mints of medieval and modern Europe. Among the coins in the accession is an example of the earliest issue of the mint (fig. 22). The obverse depicts Otto's successor, Henry II (1002-24), whose name is a bit garbled, while the reverse identifies Bishop Hartwig relatively legibly.

The real numismatic importance of the medieval bishops of Salzburg derived not, however, from the issues of their home mint, but from the mint they operated in the town of Friesach, in the Carinthian Alps to the southeast. From the early twelfth century through the thirteenth, this region was the source of vast amounts of newly mined silver, which was minted nearby and furnished the bullion for much of the growing coinage of Europe and possibly even the revived silver coinage of the Islamic world. The coinage of Friesach, exemplified by a coin of Bishop Eberhard I of the mid-twelfth century (fig. 23), became so important that mints as far away as Aquileia on the Adriatic coast produced coins modeled after it. Our new accession includes pennies of the Friesacher type from a dozen mints.

While its branch mint flourished, the coinage of Salzburg itself was modest through the thirteenth century and virtually curtailed by the beginning of the fourteenth. An exception was during the bishopric of Pilgrim II, 1365 to 1396, when Salzburg produced its first gold coin, a florin modeled after that introduced by Florence a century earlier. The coin acquired this year (fig. 24) is our first example of this rare piece, a welcome addition to our strong collection of florins, derived for the most part from the specialized collection of Herbert Ives bequeathed to us in 1954.

Even rarer than the gold florin of Pilgrim is the silver penny in his name (fig. 25). The issue with P and I flanking a facing, mitered bust was unknown until a single specimen was identified among the 1,500 coins in a hoard found in 1877 at Ober-Plsttbach in lower Austria. There can be little doubt from a comparison with the original illustration that the piece we have just acquired is the discovery coin itself (cf. Franz von Raimann, "Uber einige Aufgaben der osterreichischen Munzforschung," Numismatische Zeitschrift, 13 [1881], p. 41, 7).

One of the more intriguing coins in the collection is a counterstamped groschen of Bohemia from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century (fig. 26). These so-called Pragergroschen are commonly found counterstamped by Germanic cities for circulation, but it is unusual to find one with three different validating stamps, such as those of Nsrdlingen (the eagle), Ulm (upside-down on the lower right), and Salzburg (on the lower left).

The new acquisition is rich in multiple gold ducats of the early modern period, whose function was medallic as much as monetary. Particularly impressive is a four-ducat piece of 1628, which depicts the newly complete cathedral of Salzburg on the obverse and the transfer of the relics of its two patron saints on the reverse (fig. 27).

The collection we have just acquired cannot be traced back in this country before the Second World War. In the first half of this century, the greatest collection of Salzburg numismatics was that of Karl Roll, author of much of the important literature on the field, which went to the Salzburg Museum, the Caroline Augusteum, in 1928. At the end of the war, in May 1945, most of this collection was packed in chests and hidden in a salt mine outside of the city. The chests were removed from the mine a month later by the occupying American forces. The following January, about 1,400 of the coins were returned to the museum by the Americans, but another 2,600 remained unaccounted for. In the next couple of years, small numbers of these pieces were seized from private individuals, but as of 1955 almost 2,500 of the coins were still missing. Information has recently been released which indicates that not only were Austrian and American individuals responsible for the dispersion of coins and other art objects, but that the commander-in-chief of the American forces in Austria in the period allowed the transport of wagon loads of treasures out of the area (see Peter F. Kramml, "500 Jahre Salzburger MYnzsammler und -sammlungen," in Christoph Mayrhofer and GYnther Rohrer, eds., Tausend Jahre Salzburger Munzrecht [Salzburg, 1996], pp. 276-77).

Upon our acquisition of the collection of 94 Salzburg coins this year, the ANS communicated with colleagues in Austria to determine whether some or all of them might derive from the looted civic collection. We have compared these coins with a sketchy inventory of the missing coins published soon after the war (Josef Gassner and Hermine Holzbauer, "Munzen und Medaillensammlung," in Salzburger Museum Carolino Augusteum Jahresschrift 1955 [Salzburg, 1956], pp. 52-76), and indeed many of the coins seem to correspond to missing ones. Among these figure the rare gold florin and even rarer silver penny of Pilgrim II, as well as the triple counterstamped Pragergroschen. We have communicated these observations to the Salzburg museum and are in the process of working out with them how to confirm which, if any, of these coins are among those missing from their collection and the way to resolve this unfortunate, though unfortunately not uncommon, situation.

Another acquisition of the medieval department this year included eight Crusader coins, chiefly deniers tournois of Frankish Greece, given by Mr. Louis Zara, which have already been included in the study of a participant in this year's Graduate Seminar.

STAHL

MODERN AND WESTERN HEMISPHERE

The largest donation to the Modern Department this year was a remarkable assortment of fake coins from the Pablo Gerber collection, which was donated to us through the intervention of Professor T. V. Buttrey, Jr. Gerber was a very sophisticated collector, but he bought collections in bulk, and all collections have some fakes and oddities in the back of the safe deposit box. The fakes donated to us range from the obvious cheap and nasty casts which may be familiar to many of our members from the old "Featuring Fakes" column which Virgil Hancock used to write in the Numismatist, to some unusual fakes and contemporary counterfeits. Among the unusual ones is a struck fake of the Oaxaca 60-peso piece struck in silver (fig. 28). It may be easily distinguished from the real dies. Several of the numerous differences are that the Ss in PESOS on the obverse are larger than on the genuine piece; the period between T.M. on the reverse is too close to the M whereas on a genuine piece the period is closer to the T; and the hooks holding the balance pans on the reverse are more open, while on a genuine piece they are closed more tightly.

A particularly interesting contemporary counterfeit from the Gerber collection is this one (fig. 29), which appears in J. L. Riddell's A Monograph of the Dollar, Good and Bad of 1845. The pictures in Riddell are good enough so that one can distinguish the exact die variety, and he depicts hundreds of different contemporary counterfeit 8 reales. We found one Riddell variety among the Gerber coins: this is a Charles IV 8 reales of Mexico, assayers TH, with the impossible date of 1818, struck in lead. Like so many Riddell fakes it is very unprepossessing, indicating the crude technology available to counterfeiters in the Americas in the early nineteenth century.

That tool and die work in the United States has reached great heights is indicated by the products of Ron Landis and the Gallery Mint Museum. Landis has been attempting to duplicate the technology of the early U.S. mint, and he has been producing replicas of early U.S. coins. His products include New Jersey coppers, large cents, and his first coin in a precious metal, a gold half eagle of 1795 (fig. 30). He has clearly marked his products COPY, and where there is a lettered edge he marks the edge with his symbol, a screw press, and his initials. Anthony Terranova has kept our collection up to date with all these Landis issues, so that collectors and dealers in later years who need to determine if they have a genuine piece or a Landis replica will be able to do so by consulting our collection.

Walter Morlang bequeathed to us his collection of all the varieties of cents and half cents of 1807. This includes an example of 1807/6, the small overdate variety S-272, which Bland and Loring grade at F-15, because a foolish attempt was made to tool away the 6 (fig. 31). The pedigree of this cent is the Walter W. Garrabrant Collection, although a round ticket with the coin may be from an earlier collector, possibly Dr. Thomas Hall (fig. 32). Garrabrant died on March 1, 1944, and his collection of large cents was auctioned by Stack's, November 1949, lot 493. The lot was sold to Willard C. Blaisdell (fig. 33)and Blaisdell's cents were then sold via Del Bland to Jack Beymer (fig. 34). This particular cent was acquired by Walter Morlang, who bequeathed it to us. The cent came with the old envelopes -- and it even included a Stack's lot ticket for number 493. The pedigree indicates that the two cents listed in the condition census in Noyes' book on large cents, one with a Beymer pedigree and the other with a Garrabrant pedigree, are really this same coin, so this coin ranks among the eight finest cents of this variety, rather than among the nine finest. The obituary in the Numismatist for Garrabrant, oddly enough, says that his main collecting interest was New Jersey coppers, and does not mention his large cents. Garrabrant's name is often spelt with a D, but the Stack's auction catalogue and the Numismatist both spell it without a D.

Mark and Lottie Salton donated to us in memory of Mark's father Felix Schlessinger an assortment of world coins which were lacking from the collection. The most interesting pieces are often the very unprepossessing minor denomination coins. An example is this kreuzer of 1728 (fig. 35), issued by the barony of Reichenau-Tamins, a small principality in the Grey Leagues, ruled by the older line of the family of Schauenstein-Ehrenfels. The village of Reichenau is at the junction of the two heads of the Rhine (the Vorderrhein and the Hinterrhein), six miles west by southwest of Chur, in an area considered by many Swiss from Basel, Zurich, or Geneva to be as remote as Central Asia. This kreuzer was issued by the last male representative of the family, Thomas Francis, and upon his death in 1740 the barony passed to the family Buol-Schauenstein. The kreuzer bears, like all coins of Reichenau, the barony's heraldic emblem of three trout. It is variety 945g in the excellent catalogue of coins of Switzerland written by Jean-Paul Divo and Edwin Tobler. For the Grey Leagues during the modern period the Divo-Tobler work replaces C. F. Trachsel's pioneering pamphlets of 1866 which were written with the help of the head of the Berlin coin cabinet and friend of Theodor Mommsen, Dr. Julius Friedlander, a member of one of the most eminent Jewish families of Berlin.

Daniel Miller donated to the Society a series of tokens he accumulated on visits to Chuck E. Cheese. He found two major types in the 1995 tokens: the single ring with bow-tie type (fig. 36) and the double ring without bow-tie type (fig. 37).

Hyla Troxell has been donating to us some beautifully preserved paper money, including a number of thousand mark Reichsbank notes of April 1910 (fig. 38). These notes are very common, because they were issued in massive numbers during the German hyperinflation. Our note has the seven serial numbers of the common inflation issues, rather than the six serial numbers of the notes issued during more normal years. The back of the notes depict the imperial German arms supported by two female figures, with Navigation holding a rudder on the left and Agriculture holding a cornucopia on the right. This is a peculiarly appropriate symbolism for imperial Germany in light of the deal struck with the East Prussian agrarians (the Bund der Landwirte) and the imperialist campaigners for the high seas battle fleet (Admiral Alfred Tirpitz and the Flottenverein), which was synthesized by the Prussian Finance Minister Johannes von Miquel in his Sammlungspolitik program of 1897. The notes are beautiful pieces of engraving, and world note collectors frequently name this issue as the one note which made them decide to start collecting paper money.

To Anglo-Saxon eyes these notes are unusual, because of the security device of the same serial number printed on both the front and back of the note. This security device is used by the Germans for high denomination issues because it is very difficult to keep the two serial number counters in tandem. When the British were counterfeiting German East African notes during the First World War, they could not master the system and issued a series with unmatched front and back serial numbers.

Most of our Icelandic coins have been donated to us by the curator in Reykjavik, Anton Holt. This year Mr. Holt gave us another new issue, the 100-kronur piece of 1995 (fig. 39). It depicts on the obverse the four patron spirits of Iceland: an eagle, a dragon, a wild bull, and a giant. The reverse continues the sea-life theme of the other coins issued since the monetary reform of 1981.

Other donors to the Modern department included William T. Anton, Jr., William T. Anton III, Kenneth E. Bressett, Mrs. Catherine E. Bullowa-Moore, Charles D. Cuttler, Mrs. Marru Cross de Torres, Geza Hevizi, Professor Roger A. Hornsby, Dr. Anatoliy A. Ivanov, William S. Kable, John M. Kleeberg, William E. Metcalf, Gianni Paoletti, and bequests from Raphael Solomon and Charles K. Panish.

KLEEBERG

MEDALS

A medal donated this year by Jonathan Kagan illustrates the complexity of the papal series. The piece is a cast bronze medal of Pope Sixtus V, 1585-90, with a reverse derived from Roman sestertii of the late first century A.D. (fig. 40). The obverse is signed L. Par. for Lorenzo Fragni of Parma. Close inspection reveals such features as the fishtailing of lettering that suggest that the piece was cast from a struck original. A review of the literature reveals that this reverse type is known with obverses of two other artists, identifying four earlier popes as well as Sixtus, with variations in size and legend. A struck example with this variety of the reverse is attested in a catalogue of 1699 for Pope Paul III, who reigned half a century earlier than Sixtus (Philippo Bonanni, Numismata Pontificum Romanorum, 2 vols. (Rome, 1699), 1, pp. 221-22, 25). In a normal series one would conclude that the reverse was introduced under Paul III and that the die was reused and copied for subsequent issues. This inference cannot be made for papal medals, however, which were usually produced as the private initiative of independent artists, who held the dies personally and sold and bequeathed them at will. By 1699, a century after Sixtus V, the dies for his medals had passed into the hands of the medalist Gaspare Mola, who apparently made restrikes combining obverses of various popes with reverses which had never originally been used for them (see John L. Varriano, "Some Documentary Evidence on the Restriking of Early Papal Medals," ANSMN 26 [1981], 214-23). This promiscuous mating of papal dies continued even after the Vatican mint acquired the Mola dies from the Hamerani family of medalists in the late eighteenth century. Research in the Vatican archives and in collection inventories is only beginning to lay the foundation for a reconstruction of the original issues of sixteenth-century papal medals.

All told, the Medals Department has received 214 pieces this year as gifts from 29 individual and corporate donors. A medal issued by the coin club of Meiningen in 1982 for the millennium of that city (fig. 41) is among a large group of such pieces issued in the former German Democratic Republic and donated by Dr. Richard PeterhSnsel of Plauen. These pieces constitute a significant addition to our holdings of medals relating to numismatics. A welcome gift from Carlos Baptista da Silva is the medal made for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon by the Portuguese medalist Helder Batista (fig. 42).

EXHIBITS AND LOANS

Exhibitions have been part of the Coinage of the Americas Conference since its inauguration in November 1984. The exhibit for COAC 1995, arranged by Curator John M. Kleeberg, showed many rare varieties of counterfeit halfpence from the ANS collection. In addition to rarities from the Groves collection the exhibit also included loans from Dan Freidus, who exhibited coins of Vermont, and Mike Ringo, who exhibited selections from his unsurpassed collection of counterfeits and evasive halfpence.

Visitors to the Alexander S. Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies had the opportunity to enjoy an extraordinary exhibit organized by Chief Curator William E. Metcalf. This exhibition, "A Mediterranean Currency: Byzantine Coinage East and West, A.D. 491-900," opened in conjunction with the Twenty-First Annual Byzantine Studies Conference held in New York, November 1995.

In February 1996 the ANS hosted the Etruscan Foundation. A new exhibit was assembled for the third annual "Day of the Etruscans" by Curator Carmen Arnold-Biucchi and Sarah E. Cox.

On February 17, 1996, collectors of medallic art viewed works of the Saltus Award medalist Nicola Moss. Dr. Stahl also assembled an exhibit entitled "The English Medal," based on the Society's strong holdings of English medals and decorations and supplemented with important loans from the collections of Mark and Lottie Salton and Jonathan Kagan. Stahl also led the U.S. Delegation to FIDEM in Switzerland. The ANS assembled and forwarded the medals of the USA Delegation.

Objects from the Society's collection appeared in the exhibition "Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in January 1996, which later traveled to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. The opening of this exhibition coincided with a conference on "Western Asia Minor in Graeco-Roman Times," co-sponsored by the ANS, the University of California at Berkeley, and the San Francisco Ancient Numismatic Society.

The Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University sponsored an exhibition about "Nike, Competition and Victory at the Ancient Greek Festival Games" in connection with the 1996 Olympics. A variety of objects from the several private and public collections, including the ANS, were used to trace the origin and development of the ancient games.

The ANS provided 17 coins from the Islamic collection for "Inscription as Art in the World of Islam," held at the Hofstra University Museum, April 25 to May 24, 1996. In connection with the exhibit the Hofstra Cultural Center hosted a three-day conference and scholars had the opportunity to see a unique display of traditional and modern uses of Arabic calligraphy.

Five Indian Peace Medals were lent to the Hudson River Museum of Westchester. The exhibit was on view October 1995 -- April 1996 and depicted the trade between Indians and European settlers in New York State during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Another medal from the ANS's impressive collection of Indian Peace Medals was included in the exhibit "Away, I'm Bound Away: Virginia and Westward Movement." This exhibit, which featured objects from many important collections, took place December 1995 -- March 1996 at the Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center.

The ANS provided a unique Jewish seal portraying the sacrifice of Isaac for "Sacred Realm: The Emergence of the Synagogue in the Ancient World" held at Yeshiva University Museum, February 1996 -- February 1997. Five modern coins were also included in the exhibit "Patronage and Power: From Court Jews to Rothschilds, 1600 - 1800," which was assembled in September 1996 at the Jewish Museum, New York.

Eighteen outstanding Roman coins are on loan to the exhibition "I, Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome," which opened at the Yale University Art Gallery in September 1996. This very successful exhibition is the first one ever staged on the art of Roman women. The show will travel to the San Antonio Museum of Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, through June 1997.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has borrowed seventeen archaic Greek coins for the first phase of its newly designed permanent Greek Galleries, featuring the art of Greece through the Bronze Age.

Four other long-term loans are still on exhibit outside the ANS. The most prominent of these are 22 Greek and Roman coins on loan to the Tampa Museum of Art. They are featured in a display entitled "The Classical Past." A Charleston slave badge is at the Gallery of Merseyside (Liverpool), to illustrate the transatlantic slave trade. Jefferson Indian Peace Medals continue on exhibit at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation at Monticello and at the Yorktown Victory Center.

STOLYARIK