Abdera was an ancient Carthaginian and Roman port on a hill above the modern Adra on the southeastern Mediterranean coast of Spain. It was located between Malaca and Carthago Nova in the district inhabited by the Bastuli.
A shekel or sheqel is an ancient Mesopotamian coin, usually of silver. A shekel was first a unit of weight—very roughly 11 grams —and became currency in ancient Tyre, Carthage and Hasmonean Judea.
The history of ancient Greek coinage can be divided into four periods: the Archaic, the Classical, the Hellenistic and the Roman. The Archaic period extends from the introduction of coinage to the Greek world during the 7th century BC until the Persian Wars in about 480 BC. The Classical period then began, and lasted until the conquests of Alexander the Great in about 330 BC, which began the Hellenistic period, extending until the Roman absorption of the Greek world in the 1st century BC. The Greek cities continued to produce their own coins for several more centuries under Roman rule. The coins produced during this period are called Roman provincial coins or Greek Imperial Coins.
Roman Republican currency is the coinage struck by the various magistrates of the Roman Republic, to be used as legal tender. In modern times, the abbreviation RRC, "Roman Republican Coinage" originally the name of a reference work on the topic by Michael H. Crawford, has come to be used as an identifying tag for coins assigned a number in that work, such as RRC 367.
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians, were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term Punic, the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term Phoenician, is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West. The largest Punic settlement was Ancient Carthage, but there were 300 other settlements along the North African coast from Leptis Magna in modern Libya to Mogador in southern Morocco, as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a variety of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant.
Cast coinage refers to coins made by pouring melted metal into a mold, i.e. casting. It has been used for regular coins, particularly in East Asia, but also other areas on a smaller scale. The method differs from the current mode of coin production, which is done by striking coin blanks that have been cut out of metal sheets. The method has also been used by forgers.
The libral standard compares the weight of coins to the bronze as, which originally weighed one Roman pound, but decreased over time to 1/2 pound. It is often used in discussions of ancient cast coinage of central Italy, especially Etruscan coins and Roman Republican coinage. The adjective libral is related to libra, the Ancient Roman unit of weight, and is not related to the word liberal.
Ancient Carthage was an ancient Semitic civilisation based in North Africa. Initially a settlement in present-day Tunisia, it later became a city-state and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians in the ninth century BC, Carthage reached its height in the fourth century BC as one of the largest metropoleis in the world. It was the centre of the Carthaginian Empire, a major power led by the Punic people who dominated the ancient western and central Mediterranean Sea. Following the Punic Wars, Carthage was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, who later rebuilt the city lavishly.
Tas-Silġ is a rounded hilltop on the south-east coast of the island of Malta, overlooking Marsaxlokk Bay, and close to the town of Żejtun. Tas-Silġ is a major multi-period sanctuary site with archaeological remains covering 4,000 years, from the neolithic to the ninth century AD. The site includes a megalithic temple complex dating from the early third millennium BC, to a Phoenician and Punic sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Astarte. During the Roman era, the site became an international religious complex dedicated to the goddess Juno, helped by its location along major maritime trading routes, with the site being mentioned by first-century BC orator Cicero.
Honor Frost was a pioneer in the field of underwater archaeology, who led many Mediterranean archaeological investigations, especially in Lebanon, and was noted for her typology of stone anchors and skills in archaeological illustration.
Robert Ross Holloway was an American archaeologist, founder with Rolf Winkes of the Center for Classical Art and Archaeology at Brown University, and the Elisha Benjamin Andrews Professor Emeritus of Brown University, where he taught from 1964 to his retirement in 2006.
Carthaginian or Punic currency refers to the coins of ancient Carthage, a Phoenician city-state located near present-day Tunis, Tunisia. Between the late fifth century BC and its destruction in 146 BC, Carthage produced a wide range of coinage in gold, electrum, silver, billon, and bronze. The base denomination was the shekel, probably pronounced in Punic. Only a minority of Carthaginian coinage was produced or used in North Africa. Instead, the majority derive from Carthage's holdings in Sardinia and western Sicily.
Silk Road Numismatics is a special field within Silk Road studies and within numismatics. It is particularly important because it covers a part of the world where history is not always clear – either because the historical record is incomplete or is contested. For example, numismatics has played a central role in determining the chronology of the Kushan kings.
Greek coinage of Italy and Sicily originated from local Italiotes and Siceliotes who formed numerous city states. These Hellenistic communities descended from Greek migrants. Southern Italy was so thoroughly hellenized that it was known as the Magna Graecia. Each of the polities struck their own coinage.
The Kabul hoard, also called the Chaman Hazouri, Chaman Hazouri or Tchamani-i Hazouri hoard, is a coin hoard discovered in the vicinity of Kabul, Afghanistan in 1933. The collection contained numerous Achaemenid coins as well as many Greek coins from the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Approximately one thousand coins were counted in the hoard. The deposit of the hoard is dated to approximately 380 BCE, as this is the probable date of the least ancient datable coin found in the hoard.
Josephine Crawley Quinn is an historian and archaeologist, working across Greek, Roman and Phoenician history. Quinn is a Professor of Ancient History in the Faculty of Classics and Martin Frederiksen Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at Worcester College, University of Oxford.
Edith Schönert-Geiß was a German numismatist, who specialised in the classical coinage of Thrace and was instrumental in the post-war re-establishment of the Corpus Nummorum.
Carmen Arnold-Biucchi is a classical numismatist and archaeologist. Born in Lugano, Switzerland, she studied classical archaeology and ancient history at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, receiving her Magister in 1971. She completed her dissertation on Cypriot terracottas in 1976. She is an expert on the coinages of Greek Sicily and Hellenistic numismatics.
The Golden Bust of Marcus Aurelius was discovered on April 19, 1939 in Avenches, in western Switzerland. Measuring 33.5 centimetres (13.2 in) high and weighing 1.59 kilograms (3.5 lb), it is the largest known metal bust of a Roman emperor and is considered one of the most important archaeological finds in Switzerland. It is amongst six known golden busts made during the Roman Imperial Period.
The coinage of Capua concerns coins minted in ancient Capua, a city in ancient Campania, corresponding to present-day Santa Maria Capua Vetere. The city was located on the Appian Way and was the most important in the area, probably the largest center in the Italian peninsula after Rome.
