Istanbul Arkeoloji Muzeleri Lydia Sikkeleri Katalogu

117 pp, b/w figures, hb, in Turkish-English bilingual.

The coin collection of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, which was started to build up before the inauguration of the Museum in 1891, is not only the biggest coin collection in Turkey but also one of the important collections in the world. Many personages had their part in developing the collection to international level; first of all, Theodor Makridy Bey, who was appointed to the coin cabinet for a short period in 1892, and then for a lengthy time from 1897 to 1930; Kurt Regling, director of the Berlin State Museum and curator of its coin cabinet, was invited four times, in 1918, 1923, 1929 and 1930; and in early 1936, the coins were categorised, exhibited and published by Clemens E. Bosch, who had specialised on numismatics in Berlin, together with the Turkish numismatist Osman Nuri Andag; having taken on the duty the local experts continue to expand the collection. Having served numerous scholars until today, the coin cabinet with its low number of staff continues to serve local and foreign scholars.

In spite of the immense size of the collection, it has not been possible to prepare satisfactory number of publications due to lack of sufficient number of experts, overloaded work days, and unfortunately limited space. This work encompasses the civic coins from the ancient Lydia region, a small fragment of our collection. About five thousand bronze coins published in the Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum Sammlung v. Aulock (SNG Aulock) from the collection of Hans von Aulock, who was a collector registered at our Museum, were donated by his son to our Museum in 1981 (inv. no. 1204) after his passing. However, in the present catalogue, already published coins from the von Aulock collection are excluded, rather a few unpublished examples are included.

Technical abbreviations and references are given in the beginning of the catalogue; the catalogue is arranged according to the cities in alphabetical order and the coins of each city is given in chronological order. The data given for each coin in the catalogue includes as much as possible the metal type, weight in grams, diameter in millimetres, die axis expressed by the hours of a clock face, museum inventory number, way of acquisition (excavation find, purchase, donation, confiscation, etc.), the date of acquisition and the name of the source person for the donated and purchased coins, main parallel examples from major sources. At the end of the catalogue are the indices for the monograms, cities represented, emperors and imperial families represented, types, magistrate names, different legends, to facilitate the use of the catalogue by researchers.