Roman Finds Group Meeting at Manchester Museum 8th October 2014

Roman military diploma

The last week has been rather busy, not least because of the Roman Finds Group meeting that was held at Manchester Museum on 8th October, which I helped to organize. The group is aimed at people, museum curators, archaeologists and those who share an interest in Roman archaeology. First up was Paul Holder, who works at the University’s library and who is leading authority on Roman military diplomas. It was Paul who published Manchester Museum’s incomplete military diploma from Ravenglass, arguably awarded to a man perhaps from Heliopolis in the Lebanon who was recruited into a regiment from the Roman Army of Britain when an expeditionary force went out to help suppress the serious Judaean revolt during the reign of Hadrian in the 130s AD.

Norman Redhead talking about the recent work at Castleshaw Roman forts

Norman Redhead, County Archaeologist and Director of Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit talked about recent work at Castleshaw Roman forts. This was not the first time the site had been excavated and Norman described the various interventions at this fascinating early Roman military frontier site, which lies between Slack, near Huddersfield, and Manchester. In the 18th century the antiquary Percival sketched two forts here and the people’s poet Ammon Wrigley did some work, but the first serious archaeological work was directed by Francis Bruton over two seasons in 1907-8. Rosser and later Thompson during the late ’50s and early ’60s carried out further work for the University of Manchester, helping to clarify the relationship between the earlier and larger fort for an auxiliary cohort, and the smaller, later fortlet for a garrison for as few as 50 men. There was a community programme excavation on the site during the mid 1980s.

The earlier fort was occupied between about AD 79 and the mid-90s AD and the fortlet between 105 and the early 120s AD. This tight chronological framework means that finds from the site can be closely dated. Unfortunately the soil conditions were prejudicial to the survival of many materials. One coin of Vespasian could only be documented because its imprint had been preserved in the soil, and even samian was very abraded. Glass objects survived very well, however.  Other finds included a lava quernstone, melon beads of glass and faience, rusticated ware greyware sherds, an onyx intaglio depicting Minerva, and a little Black Burnished ware, which must have entered the North of England shortly before the fortlet was decommissioned in the 120s AD. The finds from the most recent work will go to the Saddleworth Museum. Manchester Museum has the finds from the university-led excavations.

Handsome trumpet brooch from the Knutsford hoard

Vanessa Oakden, Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme spoke about the Knutsford Hoard which was found by a metal-detectorist and included 103 coins, three trumpet brooches, finger rings and vessel fragments. Unfortunately the point of deposition had been ploughed out and the hoard dispersed but there was still a dense concentration of metalwork over some 20 x 10 metres. Some of the coins were still stuck together from their time in the container. The coins included denarii struck for Mark Anthony’s legions, and issues of Vitellius, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius and those struck for imperial ladies such as Sabina, Lucilla and Faustina II. Vanessa compared the hoard contents with another Roman hoard found at Church Minshull, which had 58 denarii and trumpet brooches. The trumpet brooches were similar to the beautiful Carmarthen brooch. The more complete brooches helped explain the rosette mount found loose in the Knutsford hoard. It looks as though the Knutsford hoard was deposited in the 190s AD. It may represent the private wealth of a soldier, landowner or merchant, and is perhaps indicative of the importance of the salt trade in the economy of the area. For further details  look this up on the Portable Antiquities database (LVPL -B44185/2012 T406).

A visit to the Manchester Museum store

The last session before lunch was presented by yours truly and I showed some of the Roman treasures from Manchester Museum’s archaeology collection, such as the Manchester word-square and talked about a couple of breakthroughs that had enabled us to provenance a previously unattributed sizeable collection of Romano-British pottery excavated by Prof.Donald Atkinson at Gayton Thorpe in Norfolk during the 1920s and a Romano-British pot from Longendale, purchased from some young lads who had found it hidden amongst some rocks. When first encountered in the store the latter shared its storage box with two unannotated small format black and white photographs showing the place of discovery and a cryptic note saying it was to be collected ‘by a gentleman’. A discussion of this acquisition turned up in an issue of Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society and the mysterious gentleman turned out to be Christopher Hawkes. This presentation was followed by a visit to the Museum archaeology store where I’d got out a selection of interesting material, including small finds from Castleshaw excavations, late iron Age metalwork from Bigbury, a complete set of decorative zoomorphic feet for a box or casket and an interesting but undoubtedly fake Mithras figurine. In this I was ably assisted and supported by Irit Narkiss, a member of the Museum’s conservation team, to whom thanks are due.

Wooden combs from Vindolanda

After lunch we were treated to a wonderful talk by Barbara Birley who presented the preliminary findings of her study of wooden combs from Vindolanda. The anaerobic soil conditions preserved a range of objects made of organic materials, including textiles, leather shoes, writing tablets and the combs. Vindolanda has yielded some 140 combs and this turns out to be the largest site collection to date (Roman London has only yielded 40). Most date from c.AD 85 to the 160s. Some of the combs were marked with graffiti or stamped with a maker’s mark. Some may have been used by professional hairdressers. Some were decorated with fretting and some had a copper alloy plate. The carefully-recorded excavations allowed the combs to be plotted spatially. One particularly interesting example came with its own leather carrying pouch or case.

Gaming counters from Chester

Our next speaker, Gill Dunn, talked about recent finds from the Chester amphitheatre site. There were two phases of building and the dep0sits contained a fragment from the hilt of a sword and remains of fast food consumed by the crowds, such as swans, geese, duck, and chicken, and fish bones from salmon, eels and carp. In fact there are few sites with such a range of domestic fowl. There were pieces of ceramic portable ovens that were probably made at Holt. The glass included pieces of facet cut vessels and are indicative of relatively high status table ware. A large collection of gaming counters (above) – of particular interest to me because of the set found outside Manchester Roman fort – appear to have been redeposited from elsewhere. Metal finds included mail links, hob nails, tools, and iron finger rings.

Enamelled Romano-British metalwork

The next speaker, Justine Bayley, talked about enamelled Roman objects. Enamel is glass fused to a metal sub-strate. Enamelling occurs on small decorative objects such as brooches, belt plates, seal boxes, studs, fittings and fasteners and votive stands, and occasionally is found on larger vessels, such as the Staffordshire Moorlands pan. Sometimes larger objects were made in separate pieces and soldered together. Some were clearly made a souvenirs for people to take away with them after a posting in the province. Reconstructions of enamelled metalwork showed just how gaudy the enamelled material was originally.

Matt Ponting talking about Roman coin analysis

Our next speaker, Matt Ponting of University of Liverpool, presented results of a programme of sampling of silver Roman coins. Earlier work in this area had sampled the surface of the coins but this gave variable and misleading results because the Romans treated the coin blanks to brighten the surface. This project showed that the Julio-Claudian emperors had a fine silver coinage until Nero reduced the fineness from 93% to 80% silver. The results of the recent sampling were more consistent than earlier readings. This brought the  denarius into line with the coinage of the Greek East and resolved problems with tax collection. The speaker also showed how studying isotopes from the samples might indicate the sources of the silver that was used. Some issues can now be characterized as using Spanish silver, some Gallic. It may be possible to identify a fingerprint for recycled metal. Matt acknowledged the institutions that had allowed sampling of coins in their collections, which include the Manchester Museum.

Scan of a coin showing differences in the metal.

Our last speaker, Rob Philpott, from Liverpool Museum discussed finds from the Roman port of Meolls. In the mid 19th century Abraham Hume reported large numbers of mostly metal discoveries on the foreshore when that stretch of coastline was undergoing rapid erosion by the river.  Activity seems to have started during the later Iron Age  and there are Roman finds even before the region was absorbed into the Roman province. Meolls was an important trading centre on the edge of the tribal territory of the Cornovii, close to that of the Brigantes. The exploitation of salt in the North West may lay behind  the economic transactions that we can detect in the coins and other metalwork found at Meolls. Sadly many of Liverpool’s finds were lost during bombing in World War II but more material has been recorded from the vicinity since then, including tantalizing objects from a later period such as a St Menas flask and a small hoard of Byzantine coins. Such discoveries are often explained away as redeposited souvenirs collected by British servicemen during the first and second World Wars but in some cases the original contextual information appears impeccable. A 6th century AD context for such finds in such a location, easily accessible by water, cannot be lightly dismissed.

St Means flask

Meolls reminded me strongly of a Roman port at Faxfleet, near Brough on the Humber Estuary in East Yorkshire, where large quantities of Roman pottery dating from the later 1st and early 2nd centuries AD was found. Its location close to the confluence of  a number of tributaries flowing into the Humber would have made it a useful location for trade. Unlike Meolls, most of the material found was ceramic. Another site further along the estuary at Redcliff, like Meolls, shows evidence of Roman trade some decades before the Romans came to northern Britain.

There was a great mix of papers at this meeting and my thanks to all those who presented or helped with the day.

A Coin of Corfu in the North West

Greek Imperial issue for Commodus

The copper coin in the image above was found by a metal-detectorist at a metal-detectign rally last month. Keith Sugden, Curator of Numismatics has identified it as a “Greek Imperial” coin (i.e. a Roman coin struck in one of the Greek cities of the empire). It shows the Emperor Commodus (177-192 AD) and the piece was produced in Corcyra (modern Corfu). The god in the shrine on the reverse is Agreus.

The god in the shrine.

As Keith himself has shown with his publication of a hoard of Alexandrian tetradrachms found in Manchester, such coins did not normally circulate in Roman Britain and we might speculate upon the circumstances which led to a Greek Imperial issue of the island of Corfu ending up in North-West Britain. Was it perhaps brought back to the North-West by a soldier returning from service in the Eastern Mediterranean after the First or the Second World War? Such discoveries have been documented in the past.

Beards back in Fashion AGAIN?

Dupondius of Hadrian (AD 117-138).

 

An article in the Telegraph on Thursday 17th April commented on the current fashion for full beards. A pognologist or beard scientist (you can get a degree in anything these days) has pointed to the whiskers sported by bearded tamarins to explain the recent trend, exemplified by The Hairy Bikers and what the journalist Christopher Howse has dubbed ‘The Hairy Allotment Holders’,  for facial fur.

According to ‘negative frequency-dependent selection’, women find the beards of a few men sexy, so other men also grow beards. The popularity of beards not unexpectedly waned once all the men were growing them. In his article Howse writes that in the 20th century the beard disappeared, surviving in such out-of-the way bastions of conservatism as the royal family and the navy.

Of course there is absolutely nothing new in the changing fashion in beards. The Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138)  made beards popular at the Roman imperial court. Previously the Romans were clean shaven. The fashion can also be seen in the Emperor Gallienus’ rather uncomfortable looking ‘below the jawline’ beard in the 3rd century AD and the Emperor Julian’s full beard in the 4th century AD.

Sestertius of Gallienus (AD 260-8)

Large bronze coin of Julian (AD 361-3)

As something of an American Civil War fan, I am not against beards per se – see the impressive beards worn by Jeff Daniels or Tom Berenger in the film Gettysburg for instance, which surely set the gold standard in facial hirsuteness – but I agree with Howse in wishing that the beard fashion would peak. I am grateful to Keith for making the coins available from the Museum’s Numismatic collection. A very Happy Easter to all the readers of this blog.

New Coin, Plus Ca Change?

New pound coin

The announcement recently of the future issue of a new pound coin because so many of the existing £1 coins in circulation are forgeries reminded me that the ancient Romans had a similar problem. A significant proportion of the silver denarii were silver plated forgeries. The Romans tried to make it harder to forge the denarius by making it with v-shaped cut-outs on the edge of the flan. This was supposed to make it harder to copy as a forgery but in fact within a relatively short space of time the forgers were copying the serratus. It makes you wonder whether the new £1 coin will be any more successful.

Roman Republican serratus showing Juno Sospita

The obverse of the serratus shows the head of Juno Sospita wearing a goat’s skin and on the reverse Juno standing in her biga or chariot, with a serpent beneath the horses. The writing says L.PROCILI.F. The Procili family originated in Lanuvium which is where the cult of Juno Sospita was popular. She was supposed to have a protective role in time of war.

Juno Sospita in her biga or cart

Roman coin striking

I am grateful to Keith Sugden for kindly getting the serratus coin out of the Numismatics collection for me to photograph and share with blog readers.

A Treasure from the Numismatics Collection

Silver ‘denarius’ of Carausius

In conversaton with Keith the other day the name of Carausius came up and Keith happened to mention that there was a silver coin of Carausius in the Manchester Museum Numismatics Collection. Like the coin issued in memory of Antinoos that I posted recently, it too was part of the collection of Harold Raby, a former Keeper of Coins at the Museum, who bequeathed his coins to the Museum. Raby acquired it as part of the Nathan Heywood collection, which he bought en bloc in February 1919. All I can say is that if Heywood’s collection included the coins of Antinoos and Carausius it must have been one humdinger of a collection.

Carausius was emperor in Britain and in parts of the northern Gaul in the late 3rd century AD. He originally held a command in the Roman fleet and was responsible for intercepting Saxon raiders who attacked the Roman province of Britannia. He appears to have come under suspicion of mis-appropriating loot that he captured from the enemy. Rather than face arrest and possible execution Carausius had himself proclaimed emperor in AD 286. At this time the legitimate emperors were Diocletian and Maximianus. Maximianus’s attempt to retake Britain was unsuccessful and Carausius ruled as emperor in Britain until AD 293 when he was assassinated, it is said by Allectus. This event seems to have followed the recapture of Boulogne by the junior emperor Constantius. Allectus ruled as emperor in Britain for three years before Constantius retook the province. The Arras or Beaurains hoard (France) contains important gold commemorative issues depicting Constantius’ entry into London. Constantius’s son Constantine would later become sole emperor of the Roman world. He was acclaimed at York.

Selfie with Constantine

Carausius’ history and coinage probably represent one of the most fascinating chapters in the story of Roman Britain. Although a Menapian from the Low Countries his coinage seems to reflect a remarkable aspiration towards Roman literary culture. Guy de la Bedoyere cracked the puzzle of the letters I.N.P.C.D.A. that appear on one of Carausius’ issues.  I.N.P.C.D.A. appears to be an abbreviation for ‘Iam Nova Progenies Caelo Demittitur Alto’ , or, ‘now a new generation is let down from heaven above’  from Virgil’s Eclogues. This is discussed in Guy de la Bedoyere’s article ‘Carausius and the marks RSR and I.N.P.C.D.A.’ in The Numismatic Chronicle 158 (1998), pp.79-88. Another coin bears the legend ‘Veni Expectate’ which appears to be a reference to a line from the Virgil’s Aeneid: quibus Hector ab oris exspectate venis? Or, ‘From what shores do you come Hector, the long-awaited one?’ But see Guy de la Bedoyere’s article for a discussion of the attribution.

Distribution of coins of Carausius and Allectus in Britain from Sam Moorhead (2014) A History of Roman Coinage in Britain Greenlight Publishing. Image (c) Philippa Walton.

Most remarkable of all is an issue acknowledging his brother emperors on the continent – Diocletian and Maximianus – bearing the inscription ‘Et Fratres Sui’, implying that Carausius was a (third) brother and an emperor of equal status. The gesture was not reciprocated. Carausius also issued good silver issues for the first time in many years, of which the silver coin shown here is a very rare example. In fact the silver content of the coin was a throwback to the reign of Nero over 200 years earlier. Typically it shows the Wolf and Twins, an archetypal Roman iconic scene if ever there was. So Carausius, through his coinage, was presenting himself as traditional Roman emperor, not the leader of an independent breakaway empire.

Wolf and twins reverse on silver coin of Carausius

I am grateful to Sam Moorhead and Philippa Walton for kindly agreeing to allow reproduction of the distribution map of Carausian and Allectan coins as part of this blog-post. Copyright remains with Philippa Walton.

 

Coin of Antinoos at Manchester Museum

Coin of Antinoos, lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138)

The recent debate about the authenticity of the Warren Cup in the British Museum reminded me that we have a bronze coin in the Numismatic collection at Manchester Museum that depicts Antinoos or Antinous, the male lover of the Emperor Hadrian. It was part of the collection of Harold Raby, a former Keeper of Coins at the Museum, who bequeathed his coins to Manchester Museum. Raby acquired it as part of the Nathan Heywood collection, which he bought en bloc in February 1919.

It is important not to interpret the relationship between Hadrian and Antinoos in modern terms. At the time what was significant was not the sex of the emperor’s sexual partner but whether he took the active role. As Thorsten Opper in Hadrian Empire and Conflict (The British Museum Press, 2008) makes clear in his chapter about Antinoos, Roman men of the upper class were, to all intents and purposes, to be regarded as bisexual. This is why the Warren Cup is so interesting.

The silver Roman drinking vessel depicts two sets of male lovers enjoying sexual intercourse. It is thought to date from the reign of Nero in the first century AD. Luca Giuliani, Professor of Classical Archaeology at Humboldt University in Berlin, has claimed that the cup is in fact an early 20th century forgery  because the sexually explicit scenes are otherwise unknown on Roman silverware. The cup was purchased by Edward Perry Warren in Rome 1911. As Warren was gay it has been suggested that the cup was made expressly for him. However, Professor Dyfri Williams, author of a book on the Warren Cup, disagrees, saying that the unique design is not necessarily evidence that the vessel is a fake.

The coin in Manchester Museum Numismatics collection shows Antinoos in profile on the obverse or ‘heads’ side of the coin and Antinoos on horseback on the reverse or ‘tails’. The obverse gives his name very clearly in Greek letters and the reverse also shows some  letters from the Greek alphabet. This coin is a so-called ‘Greek Imperial’, i.e. a coin issued by town or city of the Greek-speaking world but under Roman rule. Such towns were allowed to strike low-value coins as a concession by the Roman emperors. This coin was struck in the mint of Alexandria in what was then the Roman province of Egypt where there was a sizeable Greek-speaking population.

Reverse of coin showing Antinoos on horseback

Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan, told me recently that people who drowned in the Nile were regarded as gods. It is interesting that Antinoos, the lover of Hadrian, drowned in the Nile and was deified. However, it has been suggested that Antinoos’ death may not have been accidental and that his influence with the emperor was resented by other members of the imperial court. Whatever the cause of his death, a city was founded in his name: Antinopolis.

The relationship between Hadrian and Antinoos was the subject of a critically-acclaimed historical novel, Memoires d’Hadrien (1951) by Marguerite Yourcenar (1903 – 1987). Yourcenar’s personal life may shed some light on why she chose this subject. Yourcenar was bisexual. She met the American literary scholar Grace Frick in 1937. They became lovers and lived together until Frick’s death in 1979. Yourcenar wrote many novels, essays, and poems, and produced three volumes of memoirs of her own. She was elected a member of the Academie Francaise.

Celebrity, Beauty and the Aphrodisiac of Power

Roman coins including coin of Cleopatra (centre)

I’ve recently been talking to Roslynne Bell in Classics and Ancient History at the University about supporting  the teaching of one of her classes using objects from the Manchester Museum archaeology collection. There are twenty students in one of her classes and I was momentarily stuck for the last few objects for the students to work with until I remembered the Numismatic collection. A quick conversation with Keith Sugden, Curator of Numismatics, yielded a trio of historically fascinating coins from Roman history which I thought I’d share with Blog readers. On the left (above) is a De Britan silver denarius of the Emperor Claudius, in the centre is the copper coin of Cleopatra struck in the Alexandria mint,  and on the right is a Britannia as of the Emperor Antoninus Pius.

Coin of Cleopatra

The magical name of Cleopatra brings with it all manner of glamorous associations in popular culture thanks to Elizabeth Taylor and the famous block-buster movie. But the coin above appears to show the famous Egyptian queen with a hooked  nose. Pascal famously wrote: “Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.” Presumably because she would have otherwise found favour with Octavius. A statue of the queen The Death of Cleopatra (1867) by Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907), the first African American and American Indian female sculptor to achieve national recognition, shows Cleopatra with ‘an aquiline nose and a prominent chin of the Roman type’  in accordance with coins, medals and other evidence.

Other brutally realistic Roman coins of the period show Antony in none too flattering a light with a nose like a boxer. That may challenge modern preconceptions based on the film but it did not matter according to the realpolitik of the day. What was important was that Cleopatra was queen of one of the last and richest independent Hellenistic kingdoms and that she had played a blinder diplomatically by lending her support to one of the sides in the  civil wars of the later Roman Republic, thus apparently cementing her position as queen and that of Egypt. Cleopatra (VII) was the last in a long line of Ptolemaic rulers who introduced coinage to Egypt. What we can see but she could not until it was too late was that Mark Antony was not a match for Octavius and his general Agrippa.

Keith and I reflected on this for a minute or two and concluded that it is perhaps the modern preoccupation with celebrity and beautiful people that leads us to expect that famous people should be attractive. In fact as the scandal besetting the French president, Francois Hollande,  seems to show, you don’t need film star pin up good looks in order to rule, nor it seems to have relationships with those who, like Julie Gayet, do enjoy those attributes. The aphrodisiac of power more than makes up for any short-comings in the good looks department, in the ancient  as well as the modern world.

Since writing this some six weeks ago, the UK has been rocked (buffeted?) by its own political scandal this time besetting the UKIP leader Nigel Farage. In yesterday’s Telegraph it was reported that an  MEP, Nikki Sinclaire, had alleged in the European Union assembly that Farage had had an affair with his press officer. Farage denies the accusation. Of course this being the UK the scale and portent of what is alleged to have gone on all seem very low key in contrast to our more stylish cross-channel cousins. In the same way that the Americans had Dallas as a soap but we had Coronation Street, the comparison with Gallic politics seems decidely mundane. Some journalists have doubted whether Farage makes a likely ‘babe magnet’ but again with UKIP tipped to do well in coming local elections maybe it’s another case of the ‘aphrodisiac of power’.

Ultimately we are left with Cleopatra, who was shrewd and intelligent, enjoying the same ‘aphrodisiac of power’. Being beautiful or having a hook nose was not important.

Thanks to Campbell for kindly commenting on this blog.

An Antiquarian Gibe

Coin of Valerian

Reverse of coin showing Liberalitas

It is not so long ago that Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, made a disparaging remark about Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minster of the Coalition government between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats (Daily Telegraph 18/12/2013).

Disparaging remarks are nothing new in politics. After all, Octavius and Mark Antony wrote to each other in very blunt terms but what was unusual in this recent case is that Boris Johnson compared Nick Clegg to the Emperor Valerian (AD 253-c.260).

I can’t think of many politicians who would make such an erudite, if obscure comment. But Boris has ‘form’ in that he studied classics and has written books about the ancient world. Valerian was captured by the Persians and reputedly skinned and stuffed. Hence the political insult: Nick Clegg like Valerian is a man of straw, the external appearance, not the reality. In an exchange of  tweets that followed the newspaper reports, one wag commented that to add to the insult of being skinned and stuffed by his captors, Valerian  had suffered the  insult of being compared to Nick Clegg!

The joke has additional relish because the coin – a silver antoninianus – that Keith Sugden, Curator of Numismatics at Manchester Museum, selected has an obverse that reads LIBERALITAS. I am sure that’s pure coincidence.

However, it is not entirely clear that Valerian did indeed suffer the indignity of being stuffed. It is also possible that he was on relatively good terms with the Persian king and was sent east with other prisoners-of-war to carry out civil engineering works. But an alternative story of Roman POWs and MIAs wouldn’t make for quite the same political gibe would it?

A petrifying experience – Medusa-related objects for Coral exhibition

Some time ago Dmitri Logunov, Curator of Entomology at the Manchester Museum, and Marion Endt-Jones, who is curating the Coral: Something Rich and Strange exhibition (29th November 2013-16th March 2014), visited the archaeology store to select objects. This might seem a bit counter-intuitive because we don’t really have anything made of coral in the archaeology collection but it turned out there was a really good link with the ancient Greek and Roman collections in the form of representations of Medusa. The connection between coral and Medusa is a passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses ((4.782-86).

Bronze figurine of Mercury (1986.13)

The Greek hero Perseus, with the help of a cap that made him invisible, a sickle-shaped sword, a special satchel, and winged shoes, given to him by the god Hermes, chopped off Medusa’s head and escaped. A copper alloy figurine in the archaeology collection, apparently depicting the Hermes, shows the god wearing a winged helmet and sandals, and carrying a bag or purse (1986.13). Or is it Perseus?

Having succeeded in decapitating the snake-headed Medusa, who turned all who looked at her to stone, Perseus rescued the beautiful Andromeda from the sea monster that threatened her. After claiming her hand in marriage, he washed in the sea, accidentally causing the birth of coral by setting down Medusa’s head on the seashore: the seaweed absorbed the Gorgon’s fading power to petrify, and turned into coral.

This reminded me of a holiday in Turkey a few years ago. At the Temple of Didima, near Altinkum in south western Turkey, there are some wonderful representations of Medusa.

Medusa at Didima, Turkey. Note the wings above the forehead

A number of objects in the Manchester Museum’s archaeology and numismatic collections relate to the myth of Perseus, Medusa and the gorgoneion, the severed head of Medusa that Athena put on her shield to terrify her opponents in battle.

Roman Republican coin showing Medusa

A Roman Republican denarius issued by the moneyer L. Plautius Plancus in 47 BC is justly regarded as a masterpiece of the ancient die-cutter’s art. It shows the facing head of Medusa on the obverse: the wide, staring eyes, together with hair in the form of wriggling snakes, provides the most dramatic image of the monster on a coin.

Terracotta antefix or roof decoration depicting Medusa (accession number 1983.335)

An ancient Greek terracotta on display in the Ancient Worlds gallery at the Manchester Museum also depicts the Medusa with staring eyes and protruding tongue but without wings (1983.335). It is a fragment of a terracotta revetment from roof decoration with floral ornament and a gorgoneion in high relief. It is thought to have been found in Campania in Italy.

Bronze bucket mount or escutcheon depicting Medusa (Manchester Museum). Note the wings.

A copper alloy escutcheon, or decoration for a bucket or situla of the Roman period depicts Medusa’s head (1981.935). The open ring behind her head is for the handle. Medusa has wings in her hair and two snakes’ heads, one on either side of her temples, issuing from the hair on either side of her forehead.

Looking forward to seeing all these objects on display in the Coral exhibition when it opens 29th November 2013.

Medusa at Didima Turkey

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Thanks to Keith Sugden in Numismatics who co-wrote some of the text.

True Felicity in the Coin Collection

Giovanni Bernadi medallion of c.1536

There is a section in the new Ancient Worlds displays about fakes and forgeries and copies. So this relatively recent discovery at the Manchester Museum is very relevant.

The medallion in the photo above must have languished in what is sometimes referred to as the ‘secret museum’ (a cabinet of forgeries in the Coin Room) for the best part of a century. Keith says that although the antique style is absolutely ‘spot on’, he’s never seen a medallic piece like it that is Roman, but with Greek legend, and with no issuing city cited.

It shows a bust of Commodus facing right on the obverse within a wreath. On the reverse a lion is attacking a horse. In the portico behind, to the left, a standing figure is watching what’s going on. The Greek inscription refers to the Emperor Commodus (who reigned from 180 to 192 AD) and ‘Felicitas’ or happiness.

Keith was reluctant to accept that it was a forgery because it was so beautifully engraved, and it nagged at him  for the best part of 35 years, until he came across a reference, quite by chance, a couple of years ago. It turns out it is, in fact, a perfectly genuine and very rare Renaissance medallion of c.1536 by Giovanni Bernardi (1494-1553). Perhaps we should see this as a kind of tribute piece in the way that bands copy groups like Abba, the Beatles and Blondie, to name but a few!

It’s now been added to the trays of Italian medals in Numismatics. Keith couldn’t attend the recent staff briefing, so I took it along to show colleagues and it generated a considerable amount of interest. Thanks to Keith for sharing this with us.