Speaker
Description
The collection of silver Oriental coins from the Odessa Archaeological Museum numbers 2564 pieces. It includes the issues of 42 various states and dynasties, from Spain and Maghreb to Japan. The chronological range of this collection covers the period from the 2nd century BC to the 1920s. Only a small group of coins from this collection was published, while its greater part still remains unknown to scholars.
The collection has been amassed since 1839, when the museum belonged to the Odessa Imperial Society for History and Antiquities. During World War II, a part of the collection and numismatic inventory books were lost. Unfortunately, due to this circumstance, the provenance of most of the coins from the collection is no longer known. Despite this, the collection is of interest to researchers – for example, for the study of the coin fineness and weight standard, as well as for the compilation of catalogs.
