Conveners
S25. ANTIQUITY 5. THE SYLLOGE NUMMORUM PARTHICORUM PROJECT (SNP)
- Fabrizio Sinisi (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Description
Org. and chair: Fabrizio Sinisi
The session will focus on the Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum Project (SNP) and the coinage of Parthia between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE. The SNP will publish nine volumes of altogether c. 17000 coins from some of the most important museums with collections of Parthian coins, such as the American Numismatic Society (New York), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris), the British Museum (London), the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna), the National Museum of Iran (Tehran), the Staatliche Museen (Berlin), and the collection of the Institut für Numismatik u. Geldgeschichte (ING) of the University of Vienna. In addition, the digital archive at the online site parthia.com and the file-card archive of the ING provide over 50,000 coins from secondary sources.
The session will include four presentations by members of the project from two research units involved, the Vienna group responsible for the publication of Volume 7 in 2012, and the London group that published Volume 2 in 2020. A general introduction will be given by the two co-directors, M. Alram (ÖAW, Vienna) and V.S. Curtis (BM, London), discussing aims and results of the project. Two presentations will focus on SNP 2 and the forthcoming SNP 4 volumes: A. Magub (BM, London) will discuss the problems and methodologies encountered in the preparation of these two volumes, while C. Hopkins (USA) will highlight specific technical issues as a result of the large databases involved in the project and the impact of large scale numismatic research on the broader historical picture. The final paper by F. Sinisi (ÖAW, Vienna) will focus on the nature of Parthian mints and their place in the fabric of the empire based on the results of SNP 5.
The Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum is an international research project with the aim of using coins as an important primary source for a better understanding of the history and culture of the Parthian period , c. 248 BC – AD 224.
The Directors of the Project, Michael Alram (Vienna), Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis (London) and Fabrizio Sinisi (Vienna) are working with an international team and holdings...
This presentation discusses database management challenges met and overcome while publishing Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum Volume 2, and the ongoing preparations for Volume 4. In addition to technical database management issues, the process of acquiring, organizing and cataloguing more than 70,000 Parthian coins is discussed. Finally, the process of preparing a photos and text catalogue in...
Published in 2020, Volume 2 of the SNP series examines coin production in the Parthian Empire during the reign of Mithradates II (c. 122/121–91 BC). Although the vast majority of Mithradates’ coinage is undated and the identification of many issuing mints obscure, research findings from SNP 2 demonstrate that silver and bronze coin production became increasingly centralised during this period...
With ten mints issuing drachms, in addition to that of Seleucia on the Tigris dedicated to the tetradrachms, the reign of Phraates IV (37-2 BCE) marks a peak in the territorial distribution of Parthian coin production. Differently from the large silvers, coined only between 37 and 23 BCE, drachms were struck from the beginning to the end of the reign. The work carried out for the forthcoming...
