American Numismatic Society 2014 Issue 2
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AMERICAN NUMISMATIC ANS SOCIETY 2014 ISSUE 2 DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 5 From the Executive Director Ute Wartenberg Kagan 50 Archives 6 David Hill Cycladic Silver: Hellenistic silver issues from Paros John A.N.Z. Tully 56 Collections on the cover: Unknown “Poniatowski engraver” (c.1810–1830). The marine Elena Stolyarik deities Nereus and Doris, parents of the Nereids, floating on the waves, carnelian 62 intaglio with the signature of Gnaios News (ANS 0000.999.56796), 42 × 28 mm. 4 The Gem Collection of Prince Poniatowski Hadrien J. Rambach 18 Isola Bedda: Early Numismatic Literature and the Coins of Sicily Elizabeth Hahn Benge Contents 2 Contents ANS MAGAZINE Volume 13, Issue 2 From the Executive Director 2014 Ute Wartenberg Kagan Editor The American Numismatic Society Magazine is published Dear Members and Friends, Peter van Alfen four times a year by the American Numismatic Society. In our summer issue of the ANS Magazine, we have Annual subscription rate is $72. Copies are mailed to all again some fascinating feature articles, which illus- Advertising Editor members of the ANS. Single copy is $18. Overseas airmail trate the variety of objects in our collections and the Joanne D. Isaac is an additional cost. A membership in the ANS includes a knowledge of our members and staff. As an institu- subscription to the magazine. To inquire about a subscription tion, the Society is blessed to have so many talented Art Director please contact: ANS Magazine Subscription Dept. people involved in its many activities. Unfortunately, Sylvia Karges Elizabeth Hahn Benge Lynn Cole (212) 571-4470 ext 117, [email protected]. All rights I have to announce that two of our staff members will reserved. No part of this magazine or its cover may be repro- be leaving the Society over the summer. Sylvia Karges, any librarian busy, she was always extraordinarily help- Design duced without written consent of the copyright proprietor. our Curatorial Assistant, will be leaving the ANS after ful to visitors to the ANS Library. Elizabeth became an Rocco Piscatello Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those almost 10 years at the Society, where she helped Dr. active member and a Vice President of the Numismatic Piscatello Design Centre of the ANS. Printed in Mexico. Elena Stolyarik and the curatorial staff with registering Bibliomania Society. We all hope that she will continue Photographer The American Numismatic Society, organized in 1858 thousands of new acquisitions, moving the collections, her association with our field through the NBS. All of Alan Roche and incorporated in 1865 in New York State, operates as a exhibition work, and some specialized cataloguing. us at the ANS wish her and her husband much suc- research museum under Section 501(c)(3) of the Code and Many members and visitors will remember her as a cess in their new life in Chicago. Some of our members Contributing Staff is recognized as a publicly supported organization under wonderful assistant with their queries about the col- might see her there more often than they did in New Gilles Bransbourg section 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) as confirmed on November 1, 1970. lection. She came originally as a summer intern and York City! Barry Bridgewater The original objectives of the ANS, “the collection and volunteer, before she started her full-time position in Anna Chang preservation of coins and medals, the investigation of March 2007. Her expertise on German Talers, Meissen There is some good news to report, and I would like Peter Donovan matters connected therewith, and the popularization of porcelain, and medals in general will be very much to close with this. The Society and the Institute for the Ethan Gruber the science of Numismatics,” have evolved into the mission missed. Sylvia is in the process of submitting her PhD Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) received a much Elizabeth Hahn Benge ratified by the Society’s Board in 2003, and amended in 2007. thesis on anti-Semitism on coins and medals in Berlin, coveted grant from the National Endowment of the Sebastian Heath and we wish her all the best for the future. Humanities to produce a full online catalogue of types David Hendin of Roman Imperial Coins. Thanks to the tireless efforts David Hill As if one staff member were not enough, it is with sad- of Andrew Meadows, Ethan Gruber, Gilles Bransbourg, Oliver D. Hoover ness that I have to report that our Francis D. Campbell and Sebastian Heath, the application for the project Joanne D. Isaac American Numismatic Society Librarian, Elizabeth Hahn Benge, has decided to return was successful, and ANS will be receiving $300,000 Ute Wartenberg Kagan 75 Varick Street Floor 11 with her husband to her home town Chicago. Elizabeth over the next three years. I am also most grateful to Sylvia Karges New York, NY 10013 took over our Harry W. Bass Jr. Library from Frank our former ANS Vice President and current Director of Viviana Londono-Danailov Campbell at a difficult moment, when the ANS was ISAW, Roger Bagnall, for his support of this important Andrew Meadows Telephone about to move to its new location. It was already clear research project. Alan Roche 212 571 4470 then that the new headquarters would offer efficient, Elena Stolyarik but smaller space, and Elizabeth began to reorganize I hope you enjoy reading this issue of the ANS Maga- Peter van Alfen Telefax the thousands of volumes in the library. Under her zine. Please also do join up for our eNews, which Rick Witschonke 212 571 4479 leadership, the ANS replaced its older library cata- informs about the many activities at the ANS. All of us Matthew Wittmann Internet logue, originally designed under Harry Bass’s guid- are very grateful to our members for their support and www.numismatics.org ance, with KOHA, an open source library catalogue, generosity. and converted all records. Today, DONUM, the ANS’s online catalogue, is an indispensable tool for research- Yours truly, ers. Elizabeth also began to tackle the enormous task of cataloguing the many thousand uncatalogued items in our Rare Book Room. She oversaw the work of our part-time archivist, David Hill, and helped with the introduction of ARCHER, the new online database of Ute Wartenberg Kagan the ANS archives. While all these activities would keep Executive Director Indicia 4 5 From the Executive Director Facing page: Roman copy from AD 1st century (?) of Praxiteles’ Apollo Sauroktonos (c. 350 BC) carved from Parian marble (Louvre Museum Ma 441). CYCLADIC SILVER Hellenistic silver issues from Paros John A.N.Z. Tully The Cyclades dance around Delos in the Aegean sea the central Peloponnese. Another tells us that the between Greece and Turkey. For many, they conjure Athenians sent out a colony of Ionians to settle the up images of sun-kissed beaches, tiny white and blue island. In these competing stories, we can probably houses clinging to steep hill-sides, and the sun setting trace some of the competition between the Athenians over the caldera at Santorini. Numismatists also think and the Spartans that dominates so much of our his- of the famous archaic square cross-reverse (“quadra- tory of the region in the fifth and fourth centuries tum incusum”) silver issues the islands produced: the BC, including the work of Thucydides, which then ivy-wreathed cantharus issues from Naxos, the flying leaves traces in ancient Greek and Roman literature eagle issues from Siphnos, and, most numerous and throughout antiquity. acclaimed of all, the kneeling goat issues from Paros (figs. 1–3). Kenneth Sheedy identified no fewer than Two other myths relevant to numismatists record 286 kneeling goat specimens in his recent study, and purported colonization by Paros itself: of Thasos in ultimately considered Paros “[t]he most important the northern Aegean, and of Parium on the Helles- mint in the Cyclades during the first two decades of pont.2 The earliest known connection with Thasos is the fifth BC century.”1 Paros cannot claim that honor in the poetry of Archilochus, the Parian lyric poet for the sheer quantity of silver it produced in the who also appears on Parian tetradrachms (e.g., fig. Hellenistic period (~323–31 BC), between the death 8), and who makes several references to Thasos in his of Alexander the Great and the future emperor poetry. He “laments the misfortunes of the Thasians, Augustus’ final defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the not the Magnesians”, and claims that “the misery of all Battle of Actium. Parian Hellenistic issues are, how- the Greeks has gathered in Thasos”.3 It is now largely ever, unparalleled in the region for their iconographic accepted that there was a close connection between diversity and for the insight that they unlock into the Paros and Thasos, particularly in the mid-seventh political and economic life of the islands at the time. century: the French excavators have identified archaic Cycladic pottery and commonalities in the Thasian The History of Paros and Parian calendars and festival cycles. Exactly what Paros is the third largest Cycladic island, after Naxos the connection was, however, remains much disputed. and Andros. It lies right at the geographical heart of I personally prefer to see some of the later references the islands, between Siphnos and Naxos, Myconos and to Archilochus’ father as founder of Thasos as ancient Ios (fig. 4). As for most of the islands, its early history reconstructions based on references in Archilochus’ is controversial and shrouded in mist. The stories the own poetry, rather than independent verifications of ancient inhabitants told in historical times do, how- ever, tell us a lot about the extent of their horizons, and about the connections they and others thought 1.