Friday, December 19, 2008

Eric P Newman Seminar reading list: the ancients titles

(this is part 3 of a series on the ANS Seminar reading list.)

The first ancients title on the general list is Hacksilber to Coinage. It's in print, $50, but I think ANS members get a discount on ANS titles from David Brown Books. I I haven't read my copy but I flipped through it and it's good! (There is a good short description on the David Brown page.)

Next is an 11 page paper by Teresa Clay, "Metallurgy and Metallography in Numismatics." Hopefully your local University library has a good selection of Italian-language classics journals because thats the only apperance of this paper. I've never seen it.

Next are two hard-to-find books in French, Numismatique antique. Problèmes et méthodes edited by Tony Hackens and others, and Georges Le Rider, La naissance de la monnaie: pratiques monétaires de l'Orient ancien. The le Rider was reviewed by Bryn Mawr Classical Review.

George MacDonald's 70 page paper "The Original Significance of the Inscriptions on Ancient Coins" looks interesting. It's only appearance is in the 1910 issue of the Memoires du Congrès International de Numismatique. Good luck finding that! MacDonald also wrote Coin Types: Their Origin and Development; a 275 page book which is easy to find reprinted for under $20. Perhaps this is the follow-up? I read Coin Types but wasn't super-impressed with it. It felt more like a transcribed lecture than a book.

Next is Milne, Greek and Roman Coins and the Study of History which I've never seen but is easy-to-get, about $12+ for the 1939 original or the Obol reprint.

The final general / ancient title is C. H. V. Sutherland's 29 page Ancient Numismatics: A Brief Introduction. I've never seen it but AbeBooks reports a copy in Very Good at $26. It's an ANS publication. Google only has it in Snippet View which is quite irritating! (If anyone at the ANS is reading this, please note that Google will let you promote your books for free. There could be a nice free preview for readers with optional revenue-generating ads.) A footnote in Striking New Images: Roman Imperial Coinage and The New Testament World cites the Brief Introduction regarding the debate among classicists and historians about the value of numismatic evidence. Perhaps that is the subject of this mini-book?

1 comment:

Robert J. said...

I wrote a short review of From Hacksilber to Coinage for Amazon. It might give people a sense of what's in the volume.