Projekt

Ancient Syria has a rich numismatic heritage related to the Greco-Roman period. This heritage remains insufficiently known and is currently under threat. The project aims to investigate systematically coins minted in Greco-Roman Syria, using the collection of the Coin Cabinet of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin as a starting point. The first step is to create an online corpus of the coins held in Berlin with an adequate and up-to-date description of each object. Three further research questions, based on this corpus, will be addressed: 1) where were those coins found and how did they end up in the Berlin collection? This enables insight in areas of monetary circulation on the one hand and object biographies on the other, 2) how was local and regional identity visualised on the coins from this region?, and 3) how did changing political constellations (e.g. in the Hellenistic period or in the course of the Roman conquest) affect the production of coinage in this area?

• Prof. Dr. Fleur Kemmers

  Universität Frankfurt am Main
  Fachbereich Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften
  Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften
  Abteilung II
  Frankfurt a. M.