Greek Coins revealing Alexander the Great

This week Simon Glenn, Research Fellow for the Oxford-Paris Alexander Project introduced us to some of the issues involved around creating a display about ancient Greek coins.

We saw how he used enlarged images of coins and a map as a background to the display to tell the story of Alexander with coins. We then visited the the coin study room to handle ancient coins from the time of Alexander the Great. We saw how some had been stamped or punched to check if the silver was solid and explored the images on each side with a magnifying glass. We all agreed that we hadn’t realised how fascinating and revealing coins could be.

We enjoyed handling this gold stater showing Athena and Nike, HCR9627 (330-320) and also this silver silver tetradrachm with the head of Heracles wearing a lion scalp and Zeus seated on throne, holding an eagle and sceptre, HCR23163 (336-323 BC). You can see more coins on the Ashmolean’s Coin Room’s online collection page http://hcr.ashmus.ox.ac.uk