ANCIENT COINS

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 1552, 25 August 1926, Page 2

ANCIENT COINS

MUSEUM COLLECTION. Speaking at the British Museum on the subject of ancient coins, Mr John Penoyre gave some particulars or tno work of the Department of Coins and Medals. No more beautiful or representative collection, he said, existed, and none owed more to the liberality of private benefactors. There were well over half a million coii% in the museum, and their value might be roughly estimated at something like £1,000,000. Tho catalogues of the ancient coins alone comprised _ some forty volumes. There were on view in the museum galleries permanent exhibitions of specimens arranged m a most illuminating and instructive way. In addition to these facilities for the interested public, students of numismatics received courteous-and valuable help from the officials of the department. The speaker then gave a brief survey of ancient Greek coinage, illustrated by some of the museum's famous pieces. Among these a new and unique specimen, was shown, a coin of Tachos, the Egyptian king of the fourth centuryi B.C. As was well known, no Egyptian coins were struck till the era of the Ptolmies, but the Pharaoh Tachos had employed Greek mercenaries in his struggle against Persia, and this unique coin was presumably one of those struck to defray their cost. It bore good imitations of the familiar Athenian types, a head of Athena with her owl on the reverse side, but it bore also the King's name, and' for the spray of Attic olive beside the o-tfl was substituted a frond of the papyrus plant of Egypt. The lecture concluded with a collection of some of the coin portraits from the national collection.