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Hellenistic coinage12/25/2023 ![]() Müller was able to distinguish between the early and later coins of Alexander by examining the size of the flans, which no scholar had previously done. Hill was referring in the quote above, was a Danish scholar whose work of 1855, Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand, suivie d'un appendice contenant les monnaies de Philippe II et III, was the first comprehensive study of the coinage. To understand the revolution in our knowledge of the coins of Alexander's lifetime and the posthumous Alexander's that began with Newell's Reattribution of Certain Tetradrachms of Alexander the Great of 1911 (3), one must go back to the mid nineteenth century. After his premature death in 1941, his obituary in the American Journal of Archaeology characterized him as "America's greatest numismatist." He always remained a private scholar, laboring in his work rooms at the American Numismatic Society in New York where his collection of Greek coins today forms the backbone of the Society's world-famous collection. Newell graduated from Yale in 1907 and took an MA two years later. (2)īut at that moment the study of the Alexander coinage was about to be revolutionized by a young American collector and scholar, Edward T. A Sir George Hill wrote in 1909: There are few series which present more difficulties in the way of chronological classification than the 'Alexanders.' The mass of material is so vast and the differences between the varieties so minute, so uninteresting to anyone but the numismatic specialist, and so difficult to express in print, that very little progress has been made since the publication of L. Their very number, however, and the large array of monograms and symbols used to identify the mints where the coins were struck and the mint officials who supervised the work, make this one of the most challenging series for the numismatist. Today "Alexanders" still exist by the thousands. Even as the successor kings initialed coinages in their own names and with their own types the "Alexanders" lived on for two centuries during which time they were issued by independent cities as an international coinage. Such coins were not only minted during Alexander's lifetime but their issue was continued in the two decades following his death by the Macedonian generals who divided the empire between them and created the Hellenistic kingdoms. 2.5 cm., Brown University Collection, gift of Capt. Alexander's coins, the most familiar being the silver issues bearing a head of Herakles on one face and a seated Zeus with the king's name on the other, were struck throughout the empire. The repercussions of his reign were thus profound, and nowhere more so than in the history of money. The Hellenistic Near East and the Hellenistic world beyond the Near East were the product of Alexander's adventure. This vast region stretched from the borders of India and inner Afganistan in the east to the Adriatic Sea in the west and from Egypt in the south to the coasts of the Black Sea in the north. In the course of just thirteen years before his death at Babylon in 323 B.C., he changed the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world forever by bringing the territory of the Persian Empire under Greek rule. This pattern continued to be used on coins for centuries later, even up to the modern times.The Dating of the Coinage of Alexander the GreatĪlexander the Great, only twenty years old when he became king of Macedonia in 336 B.C., was perhaps the greatest general of all time. Then each of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings placed his portrait on the money he commissioned to be struck in his name, while the symbols of the state appeared on the reverse. Following the representations of gods and their attributes on Greek coins, the head of the deified Alexander appeared for the first time on the obverse of coins, in his capacity as son of Zeus-Amon. ![]() Alexander the Great, whose energy and ambition brought this change to the ancient world, was invested with attribute of divinity and came to be regarded as a "demi-god." The altered political and ideological aspects were soon reflected on coins. Oriental and Western Greek interests, cults and trade were now merged in larger circles of activity. A significant change in conviction took place whereby the purely Oriental concept of the ‘divinity of kings’ became an accepted matter. The transformation that took place during the Hellenistic period was not limited to politics: substantial social, economic and cultural changes occurred as well. Hellenistic coins exhibited the interaction of the various cultural elements of that period. From there they spread westward to Greece and eastward to Persia, then became common in the region of Jordan after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Metal coins were invented in Asia Minor/ Turkey during the seventh century BC.
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