Numismatic Museum

In solidarity with our students who are required to post on-line site reports, I am going to present my report on my first-time visit to the Numismatic Museum. Alas, I did not have my video camera with me, so we will have to make do with pictures.

The first, and for many people the only, reason to visit the Numismatic Museum is for the building in which it is housed. It is the gorgeous "Ilias Melathron", the mansion built by Heinrich Schliemann in the 1870s. (Get off the Metro at Syndagma Square, walk up Panepistimiou Street a couple of blocks until you see the beautiful Neo-Classical building on the right.) The building was built for the German archaeologist (if you want to call him that) by the German architect Ernest Ziller. It is in what might be called "over-the-top Neo-Classical". The exterior is relatively restrained, and surrounded by a lovely garden--Schliemann hired a local gardener whom he called "Priam", although wouldn't "Laertes" be more appropriate? The inside is rococco: all columns, pilasters, frescoes and long quotes.

Lovely exterior.

The garden is now a cafe, which looks like a beautiful refuge from the bustle of the city center.

The entrance foyer. It only gets more elaborate as you go in.

Exhibition room, done up in Mycenaean Red.

As for the collection, the first floor is devoted to Greek coins. You start in the right-hand room, with an exhibit on Schliemann's career, the story of the building, and Schliemann's own coin collection, which he donated to the Numismatic Museum (founded earlier, in 1834). The text was fascinating for those of us getting more interested in 19th century Athens and its transformation into Greece's capital. But I was disappointed that the display was something of a shrine to Schliemann. No mention was made of the controversies surrounding him, his methodology, or his honesty. Of course, in a museum whose collection is made up largely of donations by collectors, it would be rude to raise questions about where the material came from.

The rest of the first floor has various displays on Greek coinage. There was a little on the origins of currency and coinage, and then thematic displays: on hoards, on coin-making, on forgeries and overstrikes, on types of images (I especially enjoyed the coins with buildings). It was a numismatist geek's layout: rich in technical information, short on context. My own knowledge of coins is mainly in the question of origins and early economic/symbolic significance. I was a bit disappointed at the display here. It took a very Hellenocentric perspective: aside from one case on Bronze Age ingots, it had nothing to say about the use of precious metals as a means of exchange in the Near East. It was all about Greece: iron spits to coins. Even the case on the invention of coinage seemed to downplay the role of the Lydians, who most people accept were the first people to coin.

Just a few Lydian gold and electrum staters

 There was also a room devoted to the coin collections of various 19th-20th cent. collectors. It was easy to skip over these, but there were some real gems.

The Athenian Owl: plenty of examples, including a prized dekadrachm (not pictured), presented like a holy relic in its own case.

These are fun: labyrinth coins from Crete, Hellenistic?

My personal favorites: from Ithaca, Odysseus in his cap (that's a ship's prow on the left)

The exhibit continues on the second floor. There was a temporary exhibit on the coinage of Latvia--yes, a fascinating topic that you have always wanted to know more about. I gather the exhibit was occasioned by Latvia being the most recent country to join the Eurozone, this year. There is an irony here, can you spot it? I'll return to it in a minute. In any case, the display resumes chronologically, with the coinage of the Roman empire, where you can play a few rounds of Name That Emperor. Then it proceeds to the Byzantine Empire, where it tries very hard to show you that Byzantine coinage is interesting, although to my untrained eyes all of those coins look the same. (Which Michael Palaeologos was that again?). Finally, skipping lightly over the Ottoman empire (dirhams, anyone?) you end up with the coinage of modern Greece, which I found riveting, both in light of Greece's current financial troubles, and because I remember using some of this coinage not so long ago. You can trace how the imagery on the drachma changed from the period of the monarchy, through the junta, to the republic. The exhibit ends with one forlorn little case on the Euro. The message is clear: coinage was a vibrant means for the expression of Greek national identity and pride--and then we joined the Euro. It is pretty clear that the numismatists are not happy about this.

I have two major criticisms of the museum. The first is that the displays are terribly lit. I love coins for their historical interest as well as their artistic value, but they are hard to study, particularly for those of us with failing eyesight. Many of the cases had little lighting, or lighting from the side; and the daylight coming through the windows, and reflections from the glass, made the coins often very hard to see. I've always thought coin displays should have a video monitor on each case, connected to a fiber optic scope, so viewers could examine enlarged views of each coin; or at least a computer with enlarged pictures of each coin. This museum had monitors in several of the rooms, but most of them were shut off. They need to do something to make the coins more accessible.

The second criticism is that, like many Greek museums, the exhibition was created by specialists for specialists. This is great if you are a numismatist; the texts gave plenty of useful information. But for non-specialists, or the general public, it is a bit baffling. These coins have historical, economic and artistic significance; it would be nice if the museum explained this. For example, one display featured a hoard of coins of Philip II and Alexander III, found buried near Corinth and dating to the beginning of Alexander's career. The display assumed you would know the historical circumstances; but most people need a bit of a brush-up on the period, especially the uncertainty surrounding Alexander's succession, his strained relationships with the Greek cities, etc. And there was little about the economic significance of coinage, except for the later periods on the second floor.

Should you visit the museum? Yes, for the building if for no other reason. Yes, also if you are a numismatist. But for others, go only if you can bring along an archaeologist or a historian to explain the significance of the coins beyond the history of coinage. Or go with an economist if you want to get into a nice debate about the positive and negative sides of having a single currency in Europe.