For the second year running, this summer I organised and co-led a numismatics workshop in collaboration with the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, for Scottish Doctoral students (under the auspices of SGSAH: The Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities). The Hunterian has a virtually unparalleled collection of Greek, Hellenistic and Roman coins, a collection built by the anatomist and physician William Hunter.
This year, we gave students a range of Roman republican and imperial coins to handle and to learn about, discovering everything from coins minted to ‘celebrate’ Roman hegemony over the Italian peninsula, to requesting the gods’ benevolence so as to ensure the fertility of the empress Crispina Augusta. Afterwards, students were led through a whistle-stop tour of ancient Greek and Hellenistic coins from their inception through to Cleopatra.
It is a pleasure watching students get the opportunity to handle ancient coins for the first time, and some of the specimens in the Hunterian collection are amongst the finest quality coins available for study and teaching, and not in private collections.
