Benjamin Alsop, curator, British Museum

When a gallery is radically transformed how do you judge if it’s a success? Obviously you hope that visitor numbers increase, but numbers alone do not cast much light on the individual experiences of those walking around the gallery. You hope people stay longer, read more and become so interested they go away wanting to learn more. You also can’t help but wonder which cases and objects are the most popular.

In the case of the new Citi Money Gallery are people attracted for instance by an example of the world’s first coin? A beautiful hoard of Roman gold? A Hungarian banknote with the value of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengo? Or simply some white frilly pants?

To help the Museum answer such questions, and to inform future projects, we evaluate all new galleries and refreshed displays. Using both visitor tracking and questionnaires we get a better understanding of not only what people may think of the new display but just as importantly how they navigate their way around it. Over the summer we welcomed into the Department of Coins and Medals Lujia Hui and Yoomin Ko, both postgraduate students from Leicester University’s Museum Studies course.

Lujia Hui tracking visitors in the Money Gallery.

During the subsequent eight weeks they began the process of evaluation by tirelessly tracking visitors as they entered the Money gallery, marking which cases they looked at and for how long.

Tracking visitor paths through the gallery.

It is fascinating to see how people interact with the space and what route they take as they wend their way through 6,000 years of monetary history. Tracked visitors were asked to complete a questionnaire on leaving the gallery to give us a deeper understanding of their experiences.

It was a particularly interesting time to be conducting a gallery evaluation as with the arrival of both the Olympic and Paralympic games into London, the results do suggest a truly global audience. Over 25 different nationalities were recorded, speaking 19 different languages, and with ages ranging from 12 to 70.

The forgery case in the Money Gallery.

Preliminary results indicate the most popular cases are those entitled Forgery and Money and Society. Forgery contains two great swirls of coins and addresses counterfeiting, a practice which has accompanied the legitimate production of coinage since its very beginnings. Visitors appear to enjoy comparing the pound coins they have in their pockets to the fake ones on display, and have been so intrigued that the case has to be cleaned daily to remove all the fingerprints!

Suffragette-defaced penny. Crown copyright

The case about Money and Society from the nineteenth century until today, includes a penny, defaced by suffragettes, which starred in the ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ BBC Radio 4 series. Also on display are examples of money in popular culture, such as the iconic cover of the Nirvana album Nevermind, which shows a baby swimming towards a US dollar note attached to a fishing line.

The new gallery is quite different to those around it, certainly in terms of colour scheme and in-case design. Each case has a raspberry-coloured highlight panel to grab the attention of the visitor and provide a clear starting point, and a big part of the evaluation was trying to discern whether these are effective. From what we can tell, the new design is very much a success: visitors are spending longer in the space, reading more and focussing on the highlight objects in particular.

Yoomin and Lujia, after collating all the results and pulling together data from both the tracking and questionnaires, produced a final report which will form a large part of their final submission for their course. The department is incredibly grateful for all their hard work.

The evaluation of the gallery doesn’t stop here though, we are already organising for further evaluations next year so watch this space.

Eleanor Ghey and Henry Flynn, British Museum

If you listen carefully outside the Department of Coins and Medals at the moment you may hear the chink of money being counted. It’s not a surprise donation or a lottery win, but Roman coins from the Beau Street Hoard being sorted into imperial reign, bag by bag, to obtain an idea of the date and contents of the hoard.

The hoard in May 2012 in the conservation lab, excavation underway.

We collected the coins from conservator Julia Tubman in stages, as each bag was removed from the soil block the hoard was found in. Some are surprisingly heavy, about as much as I can lift comfortably. The silver coins have a pleasing weight in the hand and do not look over 1,700 years old.

An X-radiograph of the soil block before conservation taken at the Imaging Centre in the University of Southampton’s Department of Engineering Sciences. © University of Southampton

The next stage of our work is to provide information on the hoard so it can be given a provisional valuation as part of the Treasure process. The hoard has already been declared Treasure at inquest under the Treasure Act 1996. Now the coins are almost all separate and reasonably clean, it will be possible for an independent expert to do this. As museum curators, we do not have expertise in questions of commercial value but we provide a listing of the contents. The provisional value is then considered by the Treasure Valuation Committee, which recommends a final value. The purchasing museum (in this case the Roman Baths Museum) is then able to raise funds for this amount, from which a reward is paid to interested parties (usually the finder and landowner) as applicable.

The results so far…

We have been able to sort and count seven of the eight Roman money bags contained within the hoard – one is still undergoing conservation. The total so far is 14,646 coins, but as the final bag is large we expect this to go up to over 16,000 coins.

A table showing the different types and amounts of coins in the hoard

In my previous post I described the three different types of coins in the hoard (denarii and early (silvery) and later (debased) radiates). With these three types of coins one might expect a wide date range between the bags. This has not been the case. We have the very latest denarii and late silver radiates, so that the bags could have been deposited within 20 to 30 years of each other (or sorted and re-deposited together). At the moment, the latest coins in the hoard date to the mid AD 270s quite precisely.

Parts of the hoard and some of the tools used by conservator Julia Tubman to excavate it on display

A conservation-themed display of the Beau Street Hoard is now on show in Case seven of the Citi Money Gallery. This case focuses on Treasure and hoarding and features a changing display intended to highlight new or exciting Treasure finds. The Beau Street display focuses on the excavation of the soil block and subsequent cleaning of the coins by Julia Tubman.

The content of the hoard is represented by three piles of coins – one pile of each denomination found in the moneybags – and the seven-week process of excavation and cleaning is illustrated using time-lapse video footage of the removal of the coins from the soil block.

An X-ray image, which provided the first visual evidence of the grouping of the coins and acted as a guide for the excavation, is also featured in the video. Some of the tools used by Julia during this process are displayed alongside the coins which have been cleaned for identification.

Find out more about the Beau Street hoard and the Roman Baths Museum fund-raising campaign.

Sophie Mew, Project Curator, Money in Africa

I’ve been working on the Money in Africa research project to understand how coin and note currencies were introduced to the coastal regions of Africa and how their usage had spread widely by the close of the nineteenth century.

With two former British West African colonies, the Gold Coast (what is now known as Ghana) and Sierra Leone (one of the earliest British settlements on the coast), most of my research so far has been carried out at the National Archives in London, in Accra (Ghana) and in Freetown (Sierra Leone). In each place, I’ve consulted documents relating to a wide range of accounts about currencies. These included, for example, colonial despatches written by the governors of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast and sent to the Secretaries of State in London; records that were created by and filed in the Treasury department in London, as well as diaries from merchants trading to West Africa.

Documents from 1931-33, PRAAD records

One of my early finds was a series of detailed instructions for traders on an expedition to the west coast of Africa in 1796. The Governor of Freetown at the time requested that the traders gather as much information as possible to understand what it was that locals preferred to trade with, at each stage, and at what value. At the National Archives in Ghana in June 2012, I found a series of similar despatches that were distributed to District Officers in 1944. Questions related to coins and notes and what they were used for, as they sought to gather information on the preferences of “the man on the street”. Responses suggested, for example, that people who could read preferred notes while labourers preferred coins. The 1/10th shilling was used as a counter for gambling in Obuasi, and notes could be inconvenient: the “average cloth wearing African was used to carrying his money tied up in a corner of his cloth with the result that notes became crumpled and torn, got wet and became pulp.”

Inside the Sierra Leone National Archives at Fourah Bay College,

I took my first trip to Sierra Leone in January 2013 where I researched the holdings of the branch of the National Archives, located on the University Campus (Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, is the oldest university in West Africa). At the top of a treacherously steep hill overlooking the city, I consulted lists of annual stipends that the British colonial government paid to local chiefs in exchange for leasing their land, and trawled through records of fines and fees paid to the colonial police to find out what currencies people were using and when.

In conjunction with my archival research for the Money in Africa project, I was also seeking information about the use of mobile money in Sierra Leone as part of a redisplay of an exhibition panel in the Citi Money Gallery. This display panel addresses the future of money and new technologies, and is updated every six months to showcase new studies.

As I questioned members of the public in Freetown, friends I had made, and staff members of mobile money companies, I understood the wariness that people have in trusting new kinds of money and the difficulties with trying out alternative systems. What I found fascinating here was that similar justifications for the practicality of using new coins and banknotes in the nineteenth century were being repeated to me within the contexts of mobile money in Sierra Leone today.

Sophie Mew, British Museum

Every six months, one corner of the Citi Money Gallery (Room 68) is changed to help tell the evolving story of money, its many forms and its meaning in the modern world. In December 2012, the opportunity arose to help curate the redisplay of this temporary exhibition panel.

Our guiding principles for the display were that we had to focus on new technologies and the changing ways in which people use their money, from online payments, to mobile phone use, and other digital technologies. The second criterion was that the case studies we used had to come from the African continent.

My colleagues and I decided to focus on the uses of mobile money and explore the wide range of experiences of mobile money systems.

I was due to carry out fieldwork in Sierra Leone for the Money in Africa research project, so I decided to investigate the uses of mobile money in the capital city, Freetown. I was conscious of the need to explain the concept of mobile money to visitors to the gallery as clearly and concisely as possible within a limited space, while leaving room for real life case studies. When I was considering which objects to source from Sierra Leone, I also faced the challenge of how to select visually inspiring objects to explain a topic that is, essentially, a virtual one.

Before I left for Sierra Leone, I researched mobile money companies that were operating in the country and contacted Splash and Airtel members of staff for interviews. When I got there, I questioned a wide range of people, including museum curators, shopkeepers, street hawkers and taxi drivers about their experiences with mobile money.

Mobile money advert in Sierra Leone

Having seen TV adverts, billboards posted around the city or heard about it on the radio, most people I spoke to were curious about the idea of making and receiving payments via their mobile phones but there was a general sense of confusion as to what mobile money actually was or how it could be used. This led to mistrust, which was confirmed during an interview I carried out with a Splash employee, who explained that security concerns were the most frequently asked questions. People wanted to know how safe their money was, whether they could contact the company if things went wrong, what would happen if their phone was stolen and, for some individuals in business, how they could ensure the privacy of their account.

For now, mobile phone companies in Sierra Leone are busy promoting themselves around the country. They put on road shows with PA systems where they distribute leaflets and t-shirts such as the one we decided to display in the gallery. Freelancers are employed by marketing teams to encourage potential agents to join their networks. They carry out media talk shows; visiting schools and offices to explain to people the advantages of using mobile money systems in a country where the infrastructure is limited, literacy levels are low and where banks are not widely used.

Current examples of where mobile money systems can be most useful included being able to transport the equivalent of large wads of notes that no one can physically see, paying school fees and topping up electricity meters without leaving your own home. The marketing of mobile money systems is not yet considered ‘aggressive’ – rather, there is a focus on education, on explaining to people how the transactions work so that they can feel confident enough to use it themselves.

Mobile money on display

The objects and images that my colleagues and I selected for the display panel have enabled us to visually explain Sierra Leone’s mobile money systems through, for example, local SIM cards, a mobile phone, coins and banknotes. Promotional material, including a t-shirt and accompanying photographs of Freetown help illustrate the ways in which mobile money companies are trying to introduce the concept to potential customers for the first time.

In a gallery that shows the many different kinds of objects used as currency over more than 4,000 years, mobile phones, digital technology and how they are coming into use make for fascinating additions. In some ways they are the latest in a very long line of technological innovations that mark the constantly evolving story of money.

Ellen Feingold, project curator, British Museum

Walking around the British Museum one often sees visitors using their mobile phones to communicate, photograph their favourite objects, and record memories of their visit. Yet some visitors might be surprised to see a mobile phone behind the glass of a display case. While mobile phones are familiar, contemporary and useful things, they are also fascinating artefacts in their own right, and help us tell a story of how they are not only transforming the way we communicate and document our experiences, but also how we spend and save money.

Mobile money services are currently emerging across the globe and gaining popularity, particularly in places with limited banking infrastructure. These services allow users to transfer money to individuals and businesses through their mobile phone networks, avoiding the need for banks and cash. A new display in the British Museum’s Citi Money Gallery explores mobile money services across Africa.

As one of the curators of this display, I was responsible for the section on Kenya, where mobile money was pioneered in 2007. Kenya’s first and leading mobile money service is called M-Pesa; the M stands for mobile and Pesa is a Kiswahili word for money. M-Pesa’s success in gaining customers in Kenya has been the subject both of scholarly research and media attention. So, for the new display, I decided to focus on how this new technology is currently used and is affecting the lives of its users in Kenya.

Pamoja women’s group displaying crafts made for sale in Kenya in 2011. © Ndunge Kiiti.

While developing the new display I found research by two Kenyan academics, Dr. Ndunge Kiiti and Dr. Jane Mutinda, who study how women’s groups in rural Kenya are using mobile money services and the impact these services have on the lives of group members. They have found that mobile money services are central to the efforts of these women’s groups to build small businesses, which they hope will help to reduce poverty as well as gender inequality in their communities.

Group members use mobile money services to make individual and group transactions as well as pay group dues, which serve as capital for investments in new business ventures, such as making crafts for sale.

After learning about their research, I contacted Dr. Kiiti and together we explored what objects would help to share this research with visitors. We agreed that a colourful mobile phone purse made by the Pamoja women’s group in Kenya would make an ideal addition to the display. The purse symbolises how access to mobile money services has facilitated the creation of new businesses, like the one that made and sold the purse. The purse also enables the continued use of mobile money services in Kenya because it makes it easy for women to carry their mobile phones with them wherever they go.

Mobile phone purse made for sale by Pamoja women’s group, Kenya, 2011, donated by Ndunge Kiiti.

In addition to working with Dr. Kiiti, I sought the assistance of a researcher living in Nairobi, Dr. Gregory Deacon. He searched through shops and kiosks for objects that illustrate how mobile money services are accessed and advertised in everyday life.

Mobile money in Africa display in the Citi Money Gallery

One of the objects he sent me was a bottle-opener advertising a brand new mobile money product called M-Shwari. This product represents a new frontier in mobile money because it moves beyond basic transactions by giving users the ability to save and borrow money via their mobile phones. The M-Shwari bottle opener is included in the display because it signifies how rapidly mobile money services are evolving. Dr. Deacon also collected the objects that are essential for accessing mobile money services, namely SIM cards and a used mobile phone.

By putting the mobile phone Dr. Deacon collected behind glass, I hope that this display will help visitors to see mobile phones as objects that are not only useful for communicating and storing memories, but are also agents of economic and social change in Kenya and increasingly around the world.

Mahesh A. Kalra, University of Mumbai and International Training Programme curator, British Museum

During my placement in the Department of Coins and Medals as part of the International Training Programme (ITP), I was given the choice of selecting a coin hoard from the Indian subcontinent for display in the Citi Money Gallery. My initial thoughts focused on the Pudukottai hoard, a unique set of Roman gold coins found in South India. However, a chance conversation with Elizabeth Errington about Charles Masson, an enigmatic nineteenth-century British explorer, turned my attention to his discovery of a hoard of coins from the Buddhist relic deposit of Tope Kelan (also known as Hadda Stupa 10) in modern Afghanistan. I began to research Charles Masson by studying From Persepolis to the Punjab: Exploring the Past in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan written by Elizabeth with Vesta Curtis.

The Masson story is a nineteenth-century saga full of adventure, intrigue and fascinating discoveries. Born James Lewis, Masson deserted the East India Company’s Bengal Army in 1827 to assume a pseudonym of a supposed American from Kentucky, exploring Afghanistan and beyond. In Persia he met British officers who persuaded him to sell his account of the lands through which he had travelled to the East India Company. The British Resident in Tehran, Sir John Campbell, gave him 500 rupees to start exploring the ancient remains of Afghanistan. This was followed up in 1833 by funds from the East India Company to explore and excavate any sites on their behalf, on the understanding that any finds became the property of the Company. However, by 1835, his true identity had come to light, but since his knowledge of local Afghan conditions made him an invaluable asset to the East India Company, he was granted a pardon for desertion (a capital offence) in return for his services in Kabul as a ‘News Writer’, the official term for a spy in the employ of the Honourable East India Company.

Map by Charles Masson showing the position of Tope Kelan (Hadda Stupa 10) © The British Library

Masson’s excavations in the region of Kabul and Jalalabad included a series of Buddhist ‘Topes’, i.e. stupas (sacred domed structures symbolizing the Buddha). Tope Kelan (Stupa 10) on the outskirts of Hadda, a village south of Jalalabad in south-eastern Afghanistan, was excavated by Charles Masson in 1834. The relic deposit contained more than 200 coins buried along with a variety of over 100 objects including silver rings, gilded bronze, silver and gold reliquaries, glass and semi-precious beads and brass pins including a unique cockerel-headed example. These were buried as part of a Buddhist ritual aimed at earning merit in the afterlife.

Sketch of Tope Kelan by Charles Masson © The British Library

Masson returned to England in 1840 disgusted at his treatment by the East India Company, treatment which included wrongful imprisonment on the trumped-up charge of being involved in the revolt against the British in Kalat at the beginning of the First Anglo-Afghan war in 1839. The Tope Kelan coins were sent, together with all Masson’s other finds, to the Company’s India Museum in London. In 1878, when this Museum closed, 100 of the coins were transferred to the British Museum as part of the India Office Collection (IOC). Only those illustrated by Masson in H.H. Wilson’s Ariana Antiqua, can be positively identified. Others were sold at auction in 1887 to Sir Alexander Cunningham, founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, and entered the Museum as part of his collection in 1894.

Coins from the relic deposit at Tope Kelan on display in the Citi Money Gallery

The Tope Kelan deposit contains five series of coins, Byzantine gold solidi, Sasanian silver coins, Alchon Hun silver coins, Kidarite Hun gold and silver coins, and a gold coin from Kashmir, all minted before AD 480. The hoard is important evidence of the Silk Route trade network that crisscrossed Europe, Central Asia to China and India in the first millennium AD. The Tope Kelan hoard is thus a testimony to the multiculturalism of ancient Afghanistan with its links to the Indian sub-continent, Iran and China.

Mahesh working on the display

A selection of coins and objects excavated by Charles Masson from Tope Kelan are now on display in the Citi Money Gallery.

The Money Gallery is supported by Citi

Ben Alsop, curator, British Museum

Silver George V shilling re-engraved as a love token, 1916 (J.3283)

When you think of the relationship between money and war you can be forgiven for immediately thinking about the financial implications of war. The money required to put boots on the ground and aeroplanes in the sky is staggering and yet as the world remembers the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, an object in the Citi Money Gallery reminds us that not all is as it seems. To look at one side of this silver shilling is to see something unremarkable, run of the mill and even (and I say this in hushed tones) boring. The stoic, moustachioed profile of King George V gazes left as an inscription encircles him, there is no emotion to be found here, just a standard royal portrait. The other side of the coin is different; the traditional image of a lion and crown has been carefully removed to create a smooth service on which a message has been engraved. In compact script, it reads, ‘FROM FRED TO NELLIE FRANCE 1916′.

It is not unusual to see money, and especially coins, used in such a way. ‘Love Tokens’, as these re-engraved pieces have come to be known, had their heyday from the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries, when convicted criminals were transported from Britain to Australia. Large copper coins were often engraved with messages of love and devotion, a small object of remembrance left behind by someone who would most likely never see their loved ones again. Short bursts of poetry would accompany images of hearts and doves asking the recipient not to forget their existence on the other side of the world.

A soldier during the First World War was similarly compelled to engrave a simple message of devotion. 1916 witnessed two of the bloodiest battles of the war, at Verdun and the Somme in France, resulting in over two million casualties. Is it possible that Fred fought in the Battle of the Somme and if so did he return home? Who is Nellie, to whom he dedicated this coin? Quite simply we don’t know. The only information we have about the object is that it was donated to the British Museum in 1966 by Mrs Carvell from Hampstead in London. Any hopes of identifying Fred or Nellie ends here, unless someone reading this blog post has information which may help us get a step closer to the two protagonists named on this small yet compelling object.

A minor edit was made to the post on 26 Fenruary 2014 to remove the suggestion that Fred fought at the Battle of Verdun, as it is unlikely that there would have been any British soldiers at Verdun.

Henry Flynn, Project Curator, British Museum

The Money and Medals Network is an Arts Council England-funded project that exists to build and develop relationships between UK museums that have numismatic collections. As the project curator, I travel to these museums to meet the members of staff who care for such collections. One object that I have seen time and again in museums all over the country is the Lusitania medal by Karl Goetz.

RMS Lusitania coming into port, possibly in New York, 1907-13, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The sinking of RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915 was a hugely significant event during the First World War. The ship was sunk by a torpedo, a fact indicative of the increased use of submarines in marine warfare, which helped it become even more dangerous than it had been previously. The tragedy of the loss of life that included civilian passengers had global repercussions that contributed to the eventual decision taken by the United States to enter the conflict. It also sparked something of a medallic propaganda war.

Bronze Lusitania medal, by Karl Goetz (1916,0707.9), obverse

The German artist Karl Goetz was so incensed by the mere idea that a passenger liner might have been used for military purposes that he decided to produce a medal satirising the subject. He mistakenly stated on the medal that the date of the sinking was 5 May – two days earlier than the actual event. This caused an outcry in Britain and accusations that the sinking had been premeditated by the Germans. This use of the wrong date was in fact a mistake, but copies of the medal were made and distributed in Britain in protest against the Germans’ use of medallic art to effectively celebrate a tragedy. The British copy had its own presentation box that also included a document detailing the reasons behind its production. Many of these medals have since found their way into the collections of museums across the country and will be featuring in commemorative displays this year and in 2015. The British Museum has an example of the German original and the British copy and both will be displayed in the new exhibition The other side of the medal: how Germany saw the First World War. Alongside my work on the Money and Medals Network, I have had some curatorial input into this exhibition curated by my colleague Tom Hockenhull.

Bronze Lusitania medal, by Karl Goetz (1916,0707.9), reverse

The medal itself is a fascinating object that is laced with satirical symbolism. On the obverse, the ship is depicted sinking under the waves. Weapons appear on the deck, a direct accusation that the ship had been carrying munitions, thus putting the lives of its passengers at risk, the notion that had so infuriated Goetz. The reverse shows unsuspecting passengers queuing up to buy their tickets from a personification of Death who sits inside the ticket booth. The warnings of a German man stood in the background and the ‘U-Boat Danger’ headline on a newspaper go unnoticed by the crowd. The inscription above the scene means ‘business above all’ and makes the message of the medal doubly clear. The presence of Death playing an active and malevolent role in the events is a theme that pervaded German medallic art during the First World War and this will be explored in the exhibition.

Propeller from RMS Lusitania, National Museums Liverpool, author’s photo.

In 1982 one of the four propellers from the vessel was salvaged from the wreck and subsequently acquired by National Museums Liverpool. The Lusitania has a strong link with Liverpool and the propeller, now part of the collection of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, is displayed on the quayside at the Albert Dock. Services of remembrance are held next to it every year on the anniversary of the sinking of the ship.

Benjamin Alsop, curator, British Museum

The Citi Money Gallery charts over four millennia’s worth of monetary history. The Department of Coins and Medals cares for over one million objects in the Museum’s collection and like any museum with a growing collection, the most pressing questions are what should we collect and where should we put it all? Yet a recent concern for me as the curator of the Citi Money Gallery is not which objects should I select from our vast collection for a new display, but whether we had any suitable objects at all. This may sound like the murmurings of an eccentric curator, but let me explain myself.

Bitcoin token, designed by Mike Caldwell (CM 2012,4040.4)

If the gallery is to be a record of the changing nature and form of money through the ages, then it is just as important to reflect the modern world as it is ancient Greece or Rome. Modern technologies, and in particular their application, are having huge effects on the world of finance but also on society in general. As a result it would be remiss of the gallery not to discuss a particular current monetary phenomenon. I speak of course about ‘cryptocurrencies’, digital de-centralised currencies which began with the invention of Bitcoin in 2009. Since its opening in summer 2012, the Citi Money Galley has always had a bitcoin token on display, made by the software developer Mike Caldwell.

However this is really just a token for the collectors’ market, a physical manifestation of something which was never intended to exist in a tangible way. So the display at first did seem rather tricky, tricky but not impossible. Objects are at the very heart of everything we do at the Museum and while we couldn’t display a real ‘bitcoin’, there was a wealth of other material culture which could help tell the story.

The paper ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System‘ published in 2009 seemed to be the sensible place to start. Written by the unknown (although not so unknown if you are to believe an article in Newsweek magazine) Satoshi Nakamoto, it brought to the world’s attention a possible new form of currency and so is included in the display.

Bitcoin miner USB stick

Record of the first bitcoin block mined

While Bitcoin is the most well known of the cryptocurrencies it has spawned over one hundred other purely electronic cash systems since its creation. The major thing that these currencies have in common is that they are created using complex computing. To this end a bitcoin mining machine (pictured above) is displayed in the gallery with a record of the first Bitcoin block mined on 3 January 2009.

Dogecoin logo, designed by Christine Ricks

Bitcoin Magazine Issue 16: To the Moon (November)

One of the most interesting aspects of cryptocurrencies is that at the moment their use is as much a lifestyle choice as an economic one. You only need to look at the logo of ‘Dogecoin‘ to see that while Bitcoin and its descendants are a serious attempt to offer alternatives to traditional currencies, there is playfulness at work. Attempts to popularise and promote Bitcoin use similarly arresting graphic designs and so the inclusion of Bitcoin Magazine into the display adds colour and imagery.

For all the evident ingenuity at play, much of the negative press surrounding Bitcoin is as a result of its unpredictability. A look at its price from a height of over US$1000 in December 2012 to its current price hovering around US$450, is evidence of this fluctuation. The final object on display is at first glance rather straight forward. It is a Smile Bank account document recording the transfer of pounds sterling from a British bank account to a Bitcoin exchange in Japan. The exchange was called Mt. Gox, the largest exchange in existence in 2013, handling around 70% of all bitcoin transactions. However, in February 2014 Mt Gox filed for bankruptcy after declaring the loss of over 650,000 bitcoins. How this vast amount was lost, an amount worth hundreds of millions of dollars at the time, is still being investigated. The plainness of the document hides a cautionary tale about the volatility of all financial investments.

Helen Wang, curator, British Museum

‘There are Viking ships on Chinese banknotes’ I said to Gareth Williams, curator of the BP exhibition Vikings: life and legend, thinking that I could easily research them before the exhibition. After all, these notes were issued in the 1920s by the Sino-Scandinavian Bank, one of the many foreign and joint-venture banks in China at the time. But it has turned out to be more demanding than I expected, thrown up a number of interesting questions along the way, and what follows is by no means the full story.

5 yuan note issued by the Sino-Scandinavian Bank (CM 1979,1039.18). View a larger version

The Sino-Scandinavian Bank was given its charter by the Chinese government on 21 July 1921, and began operating on 7 January 1922. It was actually a Chinese-Norwegian joint venture, with the larger part of the funding coming from Chinese sources, and a smaller part from Norwegian investors. The Bank’s first notes are dated 1922, but the majority that have survived (about 30 different types) were probably issued after 1924. The bank appears to have gone bankrupt sometime in 1926 or 1927. Most of the information we know about the Sino-Scandinavian Bank comes from Bjørn R. Rønning’s unpublished master’s thesis ‘Sino-Scandinavian Bank (1921-ca.1927) En norsk bank i Kina?’ (Hovedoppgave i historie ved Universitetet i Oslo, våren 1979). Unfortunately, my Norwegian’s not up to reading it in its entirety in the original, and for the time being I’m indebted to Jan Eriks Frantsvåg’s English summary and images on his website.

Like most of the paper money issued by foreign and joint-venture banks in China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, this note aims to serve both Chinese and foreign users. At first glance, the Chinese and English sides look bilingual. But a closer look reveals lots of things that don’t quite add up.

Let’s start with the name of the bank. In Chinese this reads Hua Wei yinhang 華威銀行. This translates as the Sino-Norwegian Bank (or Chinese-Norwegian Bank). The first character hua 華 (magnificent) is often used when referring to China. The second character wei 威 (power) is from the Chinese term Nuowei 挪威 (i.e. Norway). The last two characters yinhang 銀行 are the usual term for ‘bank’. It’s interesting that the Chinese and English names aren’t an exact match. I wonder who decided the two names? The Chinese name is a more accurate reflection of the nationality of the investors. On the other hand, wei is much more meaningful (and auspicious) than any of the other characters in Sikandinaweiya 斯堪的納維亞, which is a bit of a mouthful in Chinese. But in English, the Sino-Scandinavian Bank sounds better than the Sino-Norwegian Bank, even if it is more ambitious in meaning.

The images are different too: a scene of Beihai Park in Beijing on the Chinese side, and the Viking ship on the English side. Beihai Park was once an imperial garden, but opened to the public in 1925 (according to the park’s website), three years after the date printed on the notes. The Viking ship was chosen to represent Norway/Scandinavia, an iconic symbol that works very well here (much better than a polar bear, which, according to Jan Eriks Frantsvåg, was one of the motifs originally planned for these notes.

The denomination is also interesting. The Chinese side has ‘five yuan in national currency’ printed in brown below the image, and the English side simply ‘five yuan’. The five black rosettes overstamped just below the denomination obscure the letters PEKING, and the black overstamps on the images inform us that there was a change in use to ‘Yungchi currency’ (in Chinese: ‘for circulation in Yungchi’). Yungchi (pinyin: Yongqi) literally means ‘Yong 7′ and refers to an administrative region encompassing Yongping and six other counties in Hebei province in north China. The name of Changli, one of those counties, is overstamped in black above the image, but only on the Chinese side. Yungchi and ‘Yungchi currency’ are not familiar terms, and it’s interesting to see such local references on a joint-venture banknote.

As we might expect, given the different cultural traditions, the English side has personal signatures in black, and the Chinese side has red seal impressions of authority. However, while it was standard practice to put seal impressions on notes issued by Chinese banks, it was not consistently the practice to do so on notes issued by joint-venture banks.

The signatories were J.W.N. Munthe and Fartsan T. Sung, who were very well connected with the Chinese military and government. Johan Wilhelm Normann Munthe (1864-1935) was Norwegian. Born in Bergen in 1864, he moved to China in 1886 and spent the rest of his life there. He worked for the customs service, and eventually became a general in the Chinese army. He participated in the Sino-Japanese War (1894) and the Siege of Peking (Boxer Rebellion) in 1900. He also collected Chinese art and antiquities, many of which he donated to the Vestlandske Kunstindustriemuseum in Bergen.

Fartsan T. Sung (pinyin: Song Faxiang宋發祥 (1883-?) was Chinese. Born in Fujian, he went to the USA in 1900, and studied science at Ohio Wesleyan College and Chicago. After returning to China in 1907, he held a number of important government positions before the 1920s. He was Technical Expert of the Ministry of Finance, Co-Director of the Ministry’s Assaying Office, Director of the Soochow (pinyin: Suzhou) Mine, Co-Director of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, Inspector General of Mints, Director-General of the Nanking (pinyin: Nanjing) Mint, private English secretary to President Feng Kuo-chang (pinyin: Feng Guozhang 馮國璋, 1859-1919) and political advisor to the President’s Office. He was a ‘councillor-at-large’ of the Ministry of Finance in 1920, and again from 1922-1924, during which time he was elected a Member of the Commission for the Consolidation of Domestic and Foreign Debts (1923). He co-founded the Sino-Scandinavian Bank in the spring of 1921 and became manager of its Peking office in 1924. From 1928 he was serving in Chinese consular offices overseas: in Southeast Asia between 1928 and 1937, and in Vienna between 1938 and 1940. I haven’t been able to trace him beyond this.

There are a lot of interesting things about this banknote that don’t quite add up at the moment, not least why we have the signatures of two extremely well-connected men on notes being used in a very local area. It’s curious that the Sino-Scandinavian Bank does not appear in the beautifully illustrated bilingual catalogue Currencies in Old Shanghai (老上海貨幣, Shanghai, 1998). And even more curious that the great expert on Chinese banking, Eduard Kann (1880-1962) did not include the Sino-Scandinavian Bank in his list of foreign and joint-venture banks in China. Kann started his career in a British bank in China in 1901, moved to the Russo-Asiatic Bank, the French Banque Industrielle de Chine and the Chinese-American Bank of Commerce before becoming an independent bullion-broker in Shanghai in the 1930s (the British Museum acquired his superb collection of almost 200 silver ingots in 1978), so we might expect him to have heard of it.

Perhaps there is more to this Chinese note with a Viking ship than meets the eye?

The BP exhibition Vikings: life and legend is at the British Museum until 22 June 2014.
Supported by BP
Organised by the British Museum, the National Museum of Denmark, and the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Tweet using #VikingExhibition and @britishmuseum

By David Francis, Interpretation Officer

Of all the objects I’ve worked with in my eight years as an interpretation officer at the British Museum, the Sudanese lyre is perhaps the most intriguing. Made in northern Sudan, probably in the late19th century, it would have been played by a male musician at weddings and harvest festivals as part of a small band. It may also have been used in zār ceremonies – healing rituals involving spirit possession that are still practised in Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia today.

Just as fascinating as the actual instrument are the coins, beads, shells and, as yet, unidentified objects that are attached to the lyre. In a sense, the Sudanese lyre is both a single object and an assemblage of many objects each with their own story to tell. In this blog I talk with some of the curators at the British Museum and the Royal Armouries in Leeds to identify what these objects are, and speculate on why they may have been attached to the lyre.

Sudanese lyre, probably late 19th century. British Museum

Detail showing the objects attached to the lyre which include coins, beads, shells and some (as yet) unidentified objects.

Chris Spring, Curator, African Collection, British Museum

DF: Chris why do we think the lyre player attached these objects to this instrument?

CS: They may have been given to the musician as gifts, or payment for his services. Many of the objects attached to the lyre are currency. Obviously we have the Turkish and British coins, but bead work in Africa was also used as a means of exchange. Millefiori beads – meaning ‘thousand flowers’ in Italian – were first mass produced in Venice and then the rest of Europe for this purpose. Cowrie shells were also cultivated on vast rafts in the Maldives and came to Sudan to be used as currency through Indian Ocean trade.

DF: The objects come from a wide range of places then, what’s the significance of this?

CS: For centuries Sudan has been a hub for the movement of people, goods and ideas. Port Sudan, in particular, is an important link in the Indian Ocean trade network, as well as being located on the pilgrim route to Mecca. For much of the 19th century, Sudan was also under imperial rule. From 1821 to 1885, Sudan was controlled by Ottoman Egypt and then with the building of the Suez Canal in 1869, Britain had an increasing interest in the region. The objects attached to the lyre reflect this history of trade and imperial ambition.

Two millefiori beads attached to the lyre.

Ottoman coins

Vesta Curtis, Curator of Middle Eastern coins, British Museum

DF: The vast majority of coins attached to the lyre are from the Turkish Ottoman Empire. I’ve counted over one hundred hanging from the frame. Can you tell me what’s written on them?

VC: The coins are indeed Ottoman and were minted in in Egypt and Constantinople or, as it’s known now, Istanbul. They each have the names of the Sultans minted on them in the form of their tughra – a kind of imperial monogram. The inscription also contains the date indicating the start of their respective reigns. So we have the coins of Sultan Abdul Aziz with the date 1861 (AH 1277) and the coins of Sultan Abdul Hamid II with the date 1876 (AH 1293).

DF: Sudan was under Turkish-Egyptian rule at the time, yes?

VC: It was. It had been under the control of the Ottoman Empire since 1821. However, these were the last two Ottoman rulers of Sudan. In 1885 the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, fell to the forces of Muhammad Ahmed, the self-proclaimed Mahdi or ‘guided one’. This effectively ended Turkish-Egyptian rule in Sudan.

DF: The so-called Mahdi minted coins I believe, are there any attached to the lyre?

VC: We’ve found no coins attached to the lyre dating from his reign, or from the Anglo-Egyptian period which followed.

Coin of Sultan ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, Misr, AD 1861 (AH 1277).

Coin of Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II, Misr, AD 1876 (AH 1293).

British coins

Tom Hockenhull, Curator of modern money, British Museum

DF: There are a couple of British coins attached to the lyre, can you tell me about them?

TH: The first one is a British halfpenny, dating to 1861. On one side you can see the image of Queen Victoria (r. 1837‒1901) with her distinctive ‘bun’ hairstyle. This was the new portrait of the queen, which had only been introduced onto coinage in the previous year. The second coin is more unusual. On one side is the British East India Company crest as well as an inscription reading ‘Island of Sumatra’, and the date 1804.

British halfpenny, 1861.

Trade token with British East India Company crest, probably 1830s.

DF: Okay, so it’s a lot earlier than all the other coins attached to the lyre?

TH: The date is likely to be false. Although the coin has got a British East India Company crest, it is unlikely to have actually been issued by the British East India Company.

DF: So it’s a forgery?

TH: It’s not really a forgery as there was no original to forge. It was probably made by a company in Birmingham to meet a demand for trading tokens around Singapore. Stamford Raffles had established the city in 1819 as a trading outlet and merchants in the region would have needed a currency to use for trade. This token fulfilled that function.

DF: Could you hazard a guess at the date for this coin?

TH: I’d say at least 1830s, perhaps later.

The mystery object

Jonathan Ferguson, Curator of Firearms, Royal Armouries

DF: One of the objects – a small metal mechanism – is yet to be identified. There’s been a lot of speculation on social media that it could be the firing mechanism for a firearm. Is this a possibility?

JF: I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it isn’t! I can understand why people might think this was a firearm mechanism; there is a superficial resemblance to a percussion hammer, and maybe, if you squint, a trigger! However, neither are shaped or positioned on the mechanism like a real hammer or trigger, to actually enable the operator to use them for their intended purposes of cocking and firing the gun.

The mystery object.

DF: What particular features mean that this object couldn’t be used as a firing mechanism?

JF: A real flintlock or percussion gun lock is far simpler than this. The short ribbed cylinder could theoretically be some sort of barrel, but is far too short to be functional. On the outside you have either a hollow pan for priming powder or a simple nipple to which you’d fit a cap, as on a cap gun.

This device has a round hollow feature that could conceivably function as a pan for priming powder, but no other features of a flintlock mechanism – and no nipple that you could fit a percussion cap to. Finally, the mechanism is totally the wrong shape for a gun lock.

DF: Could it perhaps be a toy or imitation gun?

JF: Cap guns had been invented as early as the 1870s and were usually made of cast metal rather than the forged iron typical of real firearms, so I did wonder if this might be a toy. Unfortunately, if anything, cap guns were even simpler than the real thing, and this object has lots of extra bells and whistles that again, would serve no function on a gun – real or otherwise.

The charms and the zār ceremony

Chris Spring, Curator, African Collection, British Museum

DF: As well reflecting the various networks of trade and empire in 19th-century Sudan, there’s also a possibility that the objects attached to the lyre might have been used in the zār ceremony itself?

CS: Yes, many of the objects attached to the lyre, such as the prayer beads and Islamic amulets, have a religious function. The coins, beads and shells may have also have been attached to the lyre as charms to attract particular spirits. Zār spirits are believed to be invisible – in Sudan they’re referred to as ‘the red wind’. But they also take on specific human forms that have a special significance in Sudanese history. You get zār spirits that are Turkish officials, Ethiopian Christian priests, British engineers and enslaved Africans from the south to name but a few. These objects might have been attached to the lyre to appeal to these spirits.

DF: Can you tell me a little bit more about the zār ceremony itself?

CS: The zār ceremony is a healing ceremony closely associated with Islamic mysticism. Although it’s currently illegal in Sudan, it still occurs throughout the region today. Within the zār belief system, it’s thought that certain people, particularly married women, can become possessed by spirits. These spirits cause the possessed mental and physical discomfort, which conventional medicine can’t cure. Zār ceremonies are held to appease and in some sense celebrate these spirits. During a specific type of zār ceremony known as a zār tambura, lyres like this one are played to calm restless spirits and also put the patient into a rhythmic trance.

DF: Is the spirit exorcised during the ceremony?

CS: No, once a patient has been possessed the spirit will remain with them for the rest of their life. The ceremony is instead a means of allowing the sufferer to learn to cope with the spirit that has possessed them. During the trance phase of the ceremony the spirit manifests itself, becoming embodied in the movement and dance of the patient. The female leader of the ceremonies, known as a shayka, tries to identify the spirit and find out what it wants. She might give the patient clothing, or incense, or even alcohol if it was a Christian spirit, in order to appease it. The objects attached to the lyre come from many regions and could potentially appeal to a wide variety of spirits. They therefore might play a part in this process of spirit appeasement.

The Asahi Shimbun Display Music, celebration and healing: the Sudanese lyre is on display in Room 3 at the British Museum until 16 August 2015.

Amelia Dowler, Curator of Greek and Roman Provincial Coins, British Museum

In 1908 workmen excavating foundations for a house in Fetter Lane (City of London) found 46 coins in a pot. The Rev’d FD Ringrose purchased the hoard and published an account in 1911 but focussed on describing the coins rather than the circumstances of the find. By the time the coins were bequeathed to the British Museum in 1914, there was no trace of the pot and no description of it either. There is no full account of exactly how the hoard was found and whilst Roman hoards are often uncovered in Britain (for example the Didcot, Hoxne and Beau Street hoards), the Fetter Lane hoard remains something of a mystery.

Extract from Pocket Atlas and Guide to London 1900 showing the British Museum and Fetter Lane (bottom right)

The Fetter Lane coins were all minted in Alexandria, in Egypt, between AD 58 and AD 284. At this period in the Roman Empire, official coins were produced at centrally controlled mints for use across the empire. However, many other mints also produced civic coins, usually in copper alloys, to be used in the local area. Coins had first been minted in Alexandria under the Ptolemaic dynasty (c.312–30 BC), which continued after Egypt became a Roman province in 30 BC. Unlike in most other provinces, Alexandria was a centrally controlled mint and the coins were initially made of debased silver before declining into a mainly copper alloy coinage. They circulated locally in the eastern Mediterranean and did not form part of the official Roman denomination system.

The earliest dated coin in the hoard (Year 5: 58/59 AD), depicting Nero. British Museum 1914,0403.2

Coins used in the Roman province of Britannia were from official Roman mints and we know this both from coin finds and from references to coins at the time, such as at Vindolanda. Why then would these Alexandrian coins be brought to Britain where they formed no part of the currency system?

Over the past 200 years or so when unusual coins like these have been found in Britain they have often been dismissed as modern imports, perhaps brought back to the country as souvenirs from the Grand Tour, or by soldiers returning from service. There is a long history of these finds being dismissed, particularly by coin experts in museums and universities. I am compiling a catalogue of this material to look into this question further: are coins from the Mediterranean world (and sometimes further afield) modern losses or did they arrive in Iron Age or Roman times? These are coins – minted between the 5th century BC up to the end of the 3rd century AD – which would not have been part of a currency system in Britain.

The latest dated coin in the hoard (Year 2: 283/4 AD), depicting Carinus. British Museum 1914,0403.46

This is a particularly relevant question today when the Portable Antiquities Scheme is regularly listing coins with similar origins to the database. The steadily increasing number of ‘foreign’ coins means that it is important to readdress this question rather than dismissing it out of hand. There are examples both of coins being found in known contexts, such as in the Sacred Spring in Bath, and also where we know that coins were modern imports, such as the Alexandrian coins found on the wreck of the HMS Pomone. For the majority of coins however we have no clear information about their findspots.

Where does this leave the Fetter Lane hoard? The fact that the coins were found together is also unusual: when ‘foreign’ coins like these are found they are usually single finds or are a rare foreign inclusion in a group of imperial Roman coins. The coins look in similar condition so it is quite likely that they were a group for some time despite the date range of the coins from AD 58 (during the reign of Nero) to AD 284 (during the reign of Carinus). It is unfortunate that the pot they were found in has been lost, as that might have supplied more information about what period they were deposited. There are a few plausible options to consider.

The coins could have been brought back as a souvenir group from Egypt by a Grand Tourist or by someone, perhaps a soldier, transiting through the Suez Canal. Souvenirs of this sort were fairly common and would have been reasonably cheap to buy locally in Egypt. After this they may have been put into a pot as a foundation deposit for a house in Fetter Lane at some point in the 1800s and were then found in 1908 during further works.

The coins could have been collected together in antiquity and deposited together during the Roman occupation of London (Londinium) after AD 50. From the dates of the coins themselves, this would have to have been after AD 284 when Londinium was a thriving Roman city. But why would this have happened? It is possible that these coins were collected together by a traveller or trader coming to London at this period. We know that the population of Londinium contained many foreigners who arrived during this time so the city was quite well connected to the rest of the Roman world. Perhaps these were kept as a memento of home or travels, or deposited for safe-keeping or as an offering for a safe journey to London.

Another intriguing proposition is that during the 3rd century AD there was a monetary crisis across the Roman Empire and at the turn of the century Roman coinage was reformed. At this point, local coinages ceased, leaving only the official Roman imperial mints producing coins. In Alexandria minting ceased in AD 297, shortly before the official reforms. It is possible that the coins were gathered together and brought westwards to fill gaps in the available currency, officially or unofficially. Or simply that when these coins became defunct they were gathered together to be used as a source of metal or kept by people thinking that one day they could use them again. However, there is no contemporary, corroborating evidence for these proposals other than the fact that there was a monetary crisis and a coinage reform.

Without any further context for the Fetter Lane hoard it is, for the moment at least, likely to remain an intriguing puzzle. By collecting together further evidence across the country, I hope to build up a picture of what kinds of coins arrived in ancient times and which arrived more recently.

Image of the Fetter Lane hoard at the British Museum. (Photo: Ben Alsop)

The Fetter Lane hoard is currently on display in the Citi Money Gallery.

The Citi Money Gallery is supported by Citi.

Further reading:

FD Ringrose (1911) ‘Finds of Alexandrian Coins in London’ The Numismatic Chronicle (4th series) vol. 11, pp. 357–8

One of the most recent acquisitions made by the Department of Coins and Medals is a highly unusual object – an ancient punch or ‘die’ used to manufacture coins in the second century BC. The die was found in Bredgar, Kent by a metal detector user in 2013 and is being used to shed new light on when the first coins were made in Britain.

Iron Age coin die. 200 – 150 BC, Bredgar, Kent, Copper-alloy, Diam. 2.6 cm, British Museum 2014,4014.1. (Photo (c) Trustees of the British Museum)

Iron Age coin die, showing two sides and the face. British Museum 2014,4014.1. (Photo (c) Trustees of the British Museum)

The earliest coins found in Iron Age Britain date from around the second century BC and, until recently, it was believed that they were produced in Gaul (a region roughly equivalent to modern day France and Belgium) and imported into south-east England. These coins, known as Gallo Belgic A, were based on the gold coinage (staters) issued by King Philip II, ruler of the Greek kingdom of Macedon from 359 – 336 BC and father of Alexander the Great.

Gold stater of Philip II, showing obverse (front) and reverse. 345 – 310 BC, Greece, Gold, Diam. British Museum, 1911,0208.2. (Photo (c) Trustees of the British Museum.)

Philip’s coin shows a representation of the god Apollo on one side and a chariot drawn by two horses on the other. Iron Age coins derived from these staters carry abstract versions of these images. The hair and laurel wreath on the image of Apollo, for example, are much exaggerated. Similarly, the image of the horse on the reverse of the coin has been stylised and is reminiscent of the Prehistoric chalk horses found on the hillsides of Britain, such as the one at Uffington.

Aerial view from a paramotor of the White Horse at Uffington. (Photo: (c) by Dave Price and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons licence)

Close examination of the coin die revealed that it was used in the production of the early Gallo-Belgic A coins. What this means is that, although it is the third Iron Age coin die to be found in the UK (the others are also in the British Museum), it is almost certainly the earliest. The most significant aspect of this discovery is the fact that it is a British find. This raises the intriguing possibility that the earliest known coins from Britain were actually made here and not just imports from the Continent.

Gallo-Belgic B coin die. 200 -125 BC, Copper alloy, Alton, Hampshire, British Museum 2005,0418.1. (Photo: (c) Trustees of the British Museum)

Around 250 Gallo-Belgic A coins are known from Britain and France, but unfortunately the new die cannot be linked to any of them. This fact has been used to suggest that it may have been a forger’s die. In reality, however, we can read very little into the fact that we do not have an example of a coin struck using this die. Little is known about the mechanics of coin production in the Iron Age and, in particular, about the authorities that produced them. The distinction between an ‘official’ and a ‘forger’s’ die may not be have been relevant in Iron Age society. A programme of scientific analysis will tell us more about how the die was made and used, but its precise origins are likely to remain a mystery.

1. The Amazon queen Penthesilea

Black-figured amphora (wine-jar) signed by Exekias as potter and attributed to him as painter. Made in Attica, Greece, 530–525 BC. Found in Vulci, Italy.

The Amazons were a wild race of warrior women, and women only, who were believed by the Greeks to live somewhere on the northern borders of the Greek world.  They were entirely mythical, of course – but they were still capable of striking fear into the hearts of Greek men, always representing a potentially deadly threat to male civilisation. Greek storytelling was full of accounts of conflicts between Greeks and Amazons, and how this dangerously female power base was eventually stamped on: the women were either defeated in battle, or ‘mastered’ in the bedroom when they finally saw the error of their segregated ways and opted for marriage with Greek men. Both versions are hinted at in this 6th-century BC pot, made in Athens. It shows the mythical hero Achilles killing the Amazon queen, Penthesilea. It was said that, at the very moment that she died, the pair fell in love. Too late.

2. A Vestal Virgin

Marble head of a Vestal Virgin. Roman, 2nd century AD.

Very few women had a powerful, public role anywhere in the ancient world. But this 2nd-century AD head shows one of those who did. She is one of the priestesses known as the Vestal Virgins, who had the important job of guarding the sacred hearth of the city in their temple in the Roman Forum. In return they were granted a range of privileges: from front row seats at the theatre to the right to free convicted criminals and special private transport arrangements around the city. But these privileges were hard earned. In addition to the obligation to remain virgins, they had to make sure that the fire on the sacred hearth never went out. If it did, it was a sure indication that the state was in danger and that one of the Vestals was no longer a virgin. And the penalty for that was burial alive.

3. The goddess Athena

Black-figured Panathenaic amphora showing the goddess Athena. Made in Attica, Greece, 565–560 BC.

Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom and of everything that demanded human cleverness, from spinning and weaving to navigation; and she was the goddess who gave special protection to the city of Athens (the famous Parthenon temple on the Acropolis was dedicated to Athena). But it is hard to know quite how female she would have seemed to the average Athenian. As you can see on this 6th-century BC Athenian pot, she was a warrior (when, apart from the weird Amazons, fighting was man’s work in the classical Greek world). She was a virgin (when women were supposed to produce babies for the state) and she herself was not even born from a woman, but direct from head of her father, the god Zeus. She certainly did not provide a positive female role-model, in the Greek sense of the word ‘female’.

4. Egyptian queen Cleopatra

Silver tetradrachm coin of Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Minted in Syria, c. 36 BC.

Cleopatra (VII) is one of the most famous women in the history of the world: queen of Egypt, lover of Julius Caesar (and mother of his child), and of Mark Antony (a relationship immortalised by William Shakespeare, not to mention Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton). Outside the heartlands of ancient Greece and Rome, there are queens and princesses with rather more power to their names. On this 1st-century BC coin, in the words around her portrait head, Cleopatra is described as ‘queen’ and ‘goddess’. But how much independent power she had is difficult to pin down. She is almost represented as the partner of some prominent Roman man. Was this equality? Was she their pawn? Or were they hers?

5. An anonymous Roman woman

Marble relief from a tomb with a portrait of a woman as victorious Venus. Roman, c. AD 100–120.

It is important not to forget those ancient women who were not rich and famous, not mythical heroines or superhuman goddesses. This Roman woman lived sometime in the early 2nd century AD. We do not even know her name let alone what she did with her life (the panel at the bottom where her history was meant to have been inscribed was left blank). But she was important enough to someone to be shown on her tomb in the guise of Venus, the goddess of love: she is semi-naked and holds a dove and a palm as Venus was often shown. For some grieving husband or parents, she was a goddess.

Do you agree? Who would be in your top five? Let us know on Twitter, where you can also follow Mary. Her 2017 London Review of Books lecture from the British Museum, Women in power, is available here, and in an edited version on the BBC iPlayer.

The history of money can be traced back over 4,000 years and includes a host of different objects – some you would expect and others that may surprise you. Think of this blog post as a dossier of dosh, a compilation of cash, a myriad of moolah…

Accountancy and beer

Sumerian deed of sale stone tablet, 2400–2200 BC.

We tend to think of money in terms of numbers today, but it’s actually the written word that helps us understand its history. When writing was first invented, did the ancients write the stories of their peoples or great literature? No – it was used primarily for bureaucracy! This clay tablet from Mesopotamia outlines a purchase over 2,500 years ago by a person called Tupsikka who bought land with over 22,000 litres of barley, 16 pounds of wool and 16 quarts of oil.

Clay tablet recording beer given to workers. The symbol for beer is included three times – an upright jar with a pointed base. Mesopotamia, 3100–3000 BC.

This clay tablet is even older – it has some of the earliest writing from anywhere in the world. It was made around 3100–3000 BC in Mesopotamia. Rather pleasingly, the text records beer given to workers as part of their daily rations.

Mint condition

Electrum coin. Lydia, 7th century BC.

Getting paid in beer might seem like a good idea, but isn’t always practical. To help with transactions, some Mediterranean kingdoms started issuing pieces of metal that were the same weight. The example above is one of the earliest coins in the world, minted in the Kingdom of Lydia (in modern day Turkey) over 2,500 years ago. Made of electrum, a naturally occurring amalgam of gold and silver, these irregular shaped coins were issued to a strict weight standard, and stamped with symbols which acted as a guarantee of weight and purity.

Bronze money in the form of a spade. China, 5th century BC.

At a similar time, coins began to appear in China for the first time. These coins take the shape of agricultural implements, in this example a spade. They bear inscriptions that refer to a geographical area, group or weight.

Heads and tales

Silver coin featuring head of Brutus and Pileus between two daggers. Roman Republic, 43–42 BC

Before the invention of printing, the coin was the great tool of mass communication. Following the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, his betrayer Brutus issued his own coins to speak directly to the people of Rome. These coins featured his portrait on one side, with two daggers accompanied by a Pileus hat (a piece of headgear associated with liberation) on the other. Below the iconography ran the now infamous words EID MAR: The Ides of March. The coin celebrates the assassination of Julius Caesar and what the conspirators saw as the liberation of the Roman people from tyranny.

Gold aureus coin of the Roman emperor Claudius. Rome, AD 46–47.

This coin celebrates the Roman emperor Claudius’ triumph over Britain. The back of the coin shows Claudius on a horse, on top of a triumphal arch. Romans built these in honour of a victorious general. The letters on the arch read DE BRITANN – the Latin for ‘[a triumph] over the Britons’.

Worth the paper it’s written on?

A note known as the Great Ming Circulating Treasure, China, 1375, with the detail of the string of coins, showing what the note was worth.

Coins are all very well, but the invention of paper money in China over 1,000 years ago is one of the true revolutionary inventions of human history. This note is worth 1,000 wen coins (coins that were confusingly called ‘cash’ by Europeans). They are shown on the note by a picture of a string of 1,000 bronze coins (in 10 stacks of 100 coins each). 1,000 coins would have been 1.5 metres long and would have weighed about 3kg(!), so having a paper note was much more convenient. However, the note also contains a strong warning to any would-be counterfeiters that their crime would be punishable by execution!

50 pfennig Notgeld. Issued in Müritz, Germany, 1922.

One of the problems with physical money through the ages has been that sometimes there’s too much of it, and sometimes not enough. During the First World War a shortage of coins encouraged towns and regions in several European countries to issue local notes worth small sums. In Germany this Notgeld (‘emergency money’) became popular with collectors who prized the notes for the great variety of designs, and by the 1920s these tiny notes were produced in vast numbers with collecting, rather than spending, in mind. Designs on the notes ranged from wartime propaganda to local views or scenes from folklore. This particular example depicts the German seaside resort of Muritz on the Baltic sea.

100,000,000,000,000,000,000 Hungarian pengő banknote. Hungary, 1946.

This Hungarian 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 pengő note is the largest denomination ever issued on a banknote. It was printed in January 1946 during a period of hyperinflation which saw denominations doubling every 15 hours. Count the zeroes!

Heavy metal and rolling stones

Copper plate money. Sweden, 1658.

Paper money and coins are convenient as they are portable, but this isn’t always the case with money. Weighing in at 14kg and over 65cm long, this Swedish plate money from the 17th century is actually a coin! The country’s vast copper resources swelled the royal coffers and, fearful of a dip in international copper prices, Sweden aimed to absorb much of its own output in the creation of a copper currency, but its abundance meant it wasn’t very valuable except in large quantities (this example was worth about 2 kegs (tunna) of rye). This practice led one Danish visitor to comment, ‘Many people carry their money in a rope on their backs, others place them on their head and, in cases of large sums, they transport them on a wagon.’ This isn’t exactly tap and go…

Stone money. Yap, Micronesia, c. 1900–1940.

Continuing our theme of big money this stone ring (rai) from the Pacific island of Yap is nearly half a metre in diameter which sounds big, but is small compared to some examples which could be up to 3 metres wide! The famous British economist John Maynard Keynes was fascinated with the money, which when in place was rarely moved but could still be spent. He described the Yap islanders as ‘a people whose ideas on currency are probably more truly philosophical than those of any country.’

Buried treasure

Corbridge hoard and jug.

Before modern banks, what could you do with your money to keep it safe? For millennia people hid money or buried it in the ground. This generally worked as gold in particular kept its value, whether or not the currency itself did. When it was found in 1911, this jug was uncovered with two bronze coins in its neck, strategically placed to hide the true value of its contents, 160 Roman gold coins!

Buddhist reliquary vase. Wardak, Afghanistan, AD 178.

Although hoards were often buried with the intention of retrieving them at a later date, sometimes people buried coins for other reasons. While money’s primary function is economic, over the centuries it has become entwined with ideas of spirituality and devotion. This vase from Afghanistan contained bronze coins and was buried as an offering to the Buddha for the benefit of a man called Vagramarega and his family.

Plastic fantastic!

Bank of Americard credit card. USA, 1966.

Around 50 years ago, another major change in the history of money took place. The first credit cards that we would recognise today were issued by Bank of America in 1958. To promote this new way to pay, the bank mailed a plastic card unsolicited to every customer in the Californian city of Fresno, California. The period between 1966 and 1970 became known as the great credit card race when 100 million cards were mailed to potential users. In Chicago in 1967 some people claimed to have received up to 15 separate cards!

Mondex card cash transfer terminal and portable card reader. Britain, 1995.

The first experiments with electronic cash payments took place in the 1990s. Mondex electronic cash system was trialled in the British town of Swindon in 1995 and was promoted as an alternative to coins and banknotes. Perhaps Mondex was ahead of its time as the trials ended without a nationwide launch of the service, but the rise of cashless payments in the UK means that over half of consumer payments today are done without using coins or banknotes. People sometimes comment on ‘the cashless society’ but we’re not there quite yet. Whatever happens, the Museum will continue to collect and display objects that tell this constantly evolving and often fascinating story.

Trace the history of money from prehistory to the present day in the British Museum’s Citi Money Gallery.

Supported by Citi.

Stamped in crude lettering across the head of the king is the phrase ‘VOTES FOR WOMEN’, the slogan of the suffragette movement. The deliberate targeting of the king, as the constitutional monarch and head of the Church of England, could be likened to iconoclasm, a direct assault on the male authority figures that were perceived to be upholding the laws of the country. As Neil MacGregor wrote in A History of the World in 100 Objects, ‘this coin stands for all those who fought for the right to vote’.

The British Museum’s example was minted in 1903 but most likely circulated unaltered for ten years before it was defaced, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War in around 1913–1914. We know this from the date of other coins bearing the same slogan in identical lettering. It was said at the time, that the suffragettes had copied the practice from anarchists, who were defacing similar coins with the phrase ‘Vive l’Anarchie’. Precisely just how many coins were defaced is unknown: several other examples are known to exist besides the Museum’s ‘Votes for Women’ coin, but the effort required to deface a single coin means it is unlikely that many were made. It was probably carried out by a single person using just one set of individual alphabet stamps, a process that would have been repetitive and time-consuming. The perpetrator has never been traced, and no direct connection has ever been established between the coins and the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) or other suffragette organisations.

The First World War is commonly perceived as a watershed moment, when the sun finally set on the Victorian golden age: ‘never such innocence, never before or since’, to use the oft-quoted words of Larkin. Yet this is a romanticised and superficial view of pre-war Britain that conceals a more disturbing image, of a country beset by domestic crises and civil disorder. These included anarchist violence and the beginnings of the Troubles in Ireland, and chief among them was the campaign for women’s suffrage. Suffragette militarism, or ‘direct action’, as it was also known, was characterised by bombings, arson, window smashing and the destruction of cultural property. It reached a tragic climax when Emily Wilding Davison ran out in front of the king’s horse at the Epsom Derby, in June 1914. The simple act of defacing a coin can appear trivial in comparison with these more serious acts of sedition, but it nevertheless conveyed the same symbolic message of protest against a government that refused to extend women the vote.

The coin is displayed in the Citi Money Gallery (Room 68).

Hockenhull, Thomas. ‘Stamped all over the King’s Head: Defaced Coins and Women’s Suffrage’, British Numismatic Journal, 86 (2016), pp.238-245.

It’s 1 April – and that means April Fools’ Day. The day’s origins are shrouded in mystery, with many possible explanations offered (which you can handily read on Wikipedia or Snopes if you like).

In the spirit of the day, we’ve selected five fakes, forgeries and things designed to fool that you can find in the Museum’s collection. Although they may not be what they claim to be, these objects are still of great value and interest. We’ve even included a bonus sneak preview of a forthcoming exhibition all about fakes.

Antiques faux show

The Piranesi Vase: about 7% Roman. Not really a vase either…

Italian architect and engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) is best known for his architectural views of ancient and modern Rome aimed at the Grand Tour market. By the late 1760s he began to engage in the lucrative restoration and sale of antiquities. In 1769 he acquired a great number of ancient fragments found on the grounds of the villa of the Roman emperor Hadrian (r. AD 117–138) at Tivoli near Rome. He restored these fragments and incorporated them into highly decorative pastiches. He even published a book describing them.

Piranesi’s description of this vase in his book praises it as a fine work dating to the time of the emperor Hadrian – the second century AD. However, he does not mention that only small sections of it are ancient (two of the bull’s heads on the base, sections of the lion’s legs and parts of the relief depicting satyrs picking grapes). The rest of it is entirely of Piranesi’s own making. So the vase is really a grand neoclassical work rather than an antiquity, as Piranesi claimed. You can see it today in Room 1, the Enlightenment Gallery.

Special Offa

Offa imitation dinar: not quite the shilling (or the dinar).

This unique gold coin of Offa, king of Mercia, is one of the most remarkable English coins of the Middle Ages. It imitates a gold dinar of the caliph al-Mansur, ruler of the Islamic Abbasid dynasty. Although the Arabic inscription is not copied perfectly, it is close enough that it is clear that the original from which it was copied was struck in the Islamic year AH 157 (AD 773–774). It seems that the engraver had no understanding of the Arabic script – the name and title OFFA REX (King Offa) has been inserted upside down in relation to the Arabic inscription.

Why the coin was made is not known for certain. It has been suggested that it was made as a gift for the pope (it was first recorded in Rome), but it is unlikely that any Christian king would have sent the pope a coin with an inscription stating that ‘there is no God but Allah alone’, however badly the Arabic had been copied. It is more likely that it was designed for use in trade – Islamic gold dinars were the most important coinage in the Mediterranean at the time. Offa’s coin looked enough like the original that it would be readily accepted in southern Europe, while at the same time his own name was clearly visible.

A bit fishy

‘Merman’: not actually a merman, more a ‘monkey-fish’…

Did you know there was a merman on display in the Enlightenment Gallery (Room 1)? OK, not really a merman – it’s actually part monkey, part fish! It was donated by HRH Prince Arthur of Connaught (1883–1938), grandson of Queen Victoria, and was said to have been ‘caught’ in Japan during the 18th century. It was given to Prince Arthur by an individual named Arisue Seijiro.

‘Mermen’, though more often ‘mermaids’, are well known in ancient, medieval and modern mythology across a number of different cultures. They are represented in art and sculpture, and examples like this one were also presented as curiosities in private houses and popular sideshows in Europe from at least the 17th century. A large number of these seem to have come from East Asia, especially Japan.

The Museum’s ‘merman’ is displayed in the Enlightenment Gallery as an example of the kind of ‘curiosity’ that was found in early collections before the more encyclopaedic and reasoned approach to collecting that evolved through the 1700s. In this context it helps to show how museums changed during the 18th century from cabinets of curiosity to the type of museums we are more familiar with today.

Family jewels

Hippocamp pendant: not a Renaissance jewel (but still rather lovely).

This pendant was acquired by the Rothschild family from the Conyngham collection and appears to have been in the Debruge Dumenil collection in Paris before 1847, which would make it an early documented fake. It is made of enamelled gold, emeralds and pearls, and is in the form of a hippocamp with a Native American rider. The hippocamp (also hippocampus – from the Greek ἵππος (horse) and κάμπος (monster)) is a mythological creature sometimes known in English as a sea-horse. It is usually depicted with a horse’s front and fish-like hindquarters.

The pendant looks similar to jewels made in the 16th century that were intended to show off massive deep-green emeralds from the Colombian mines in the New World. This example was probably made in Paris in the early 19th century though, as an imitation of this Renaissance splendour. It is set with 13 impressive cabochon and table-cut emeralds. The separately cast Native American rider (riding side-saddle) was perhaps thought appropriate for a jewel set with Colombian emeralds. It’s on display in Room 2a, the Waddesdon Bequest, which houses a surprising number of fakes alongside original medieval and Renaissance treasures, all collected by the Rothschild family in the 19th century.

Funny money

Forged Swedish note: Monopoly money is better than this.

This counterfeit banknote was made in Gothenburg, Sweden, in the 1860s. It was hand drawn and the forger has attempted to replicate a printed Swedish 10 riksdaler note. It must have taken a long time to produce. The appearance and feel of money can be central to an individual’s willingness to accept it. Would you be convinced by this fake? (You can see what a real one looked like here…)

Although it may seem relatively harmless today, forgery was generally considered to be a very serious crime, often with extremely harsh punishments. In medieval times, convicted counterfeiters in Germany were boiled alive in oil, and in Russia they had molten lead poured down their throat. In the 17th century, women involved with forgery could be burnt at the stake and even in the 19th century forgers could be hanged. Although the death penalty is no longer used in the UK, forgery and counterfeiting are still punishable by a prison sentence – so don’t try this at home!

What do you think? What’s your favourite fake in the collection? Are there any fabulous forgeries you love seeing? Let us know on Twitter.

Part of the ‘Piano Hoard’ discovered in Shropshire. © Portable Antiquities Scheme/The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo: Peter Reavill.

It’s no surprise that a lot of people are excited and intrigued by the discovery of the so-called ‘Piano Hoard’. We grow up with stories of hidden treasures and the brave or lucky people that find them, and it can be appealing to imagine ourselves in their places. The Piano Hoard story has the added excitement that it’s relatively recent – this is not a long-buried assemblage of war booty or grave goods, but a large sum of money hidden in plain sight less than 100 years ago. So what happened to the original owner and why was the hoard hidden in the first place?

First, to take a step back, it should be explained that despite its adopted title the Piano Hoard is not a collection of musical instruments(!) but rather a group of 913 gold sovereigns and half-sovereigns found stashed under the keyboard of a Broadwood & Sons upright piano, made in 1906. Martin Backhouse had been asked by the piano’s owners, the Bishop’s Castle Community College, to tune the newly acquired instrument and in the course of doing so he removed the keys and noticed seven cloth-wrapped parcels in spaces which should have been empty. Looking inside one, he noticed the gold coins and immediately informed the school. The school, knowing they hadn’t put the coins there, then in turn contacted HM Coroner for Shropshire, John Ellery, as required by law under the Treasure Act 1996.

The piano in which the hoard was discovered, donated to the school by Mr and Mrs Hemmings. Photo: Peter Reavill.

This sequence of events often perplexes people, who usually associate coroners with investigations into sudden and suspicious deaths (which in truth is a major part of their role). But in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, coroners also act as the Crown’s representative in cases of potential ‘Treasure’, a legal term defined by the Treasure Act (Scotland has a separate law of Treasure Trove).

It is also why you are reading about the Piano Hoard in a British Museum blog. The British Museum acts as the Treasure Registry for all finds of potential Treasure from England, and performs the secretarial work for the Treasure Valuation Committee (TVC), an independent body that recommends values for Treasure finds to the Secretary of State. Furthermore, the British Museum coordinates the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), a network of regional Finds Liaison Officers (FLOs) who record archaeological finds discovered by the public on a free-to-use database.

Importantly for this story, FLOs also support coroners in their Treasure work, and the FLO for Shropshire and Herefordshire, Peter Reavill, has been heavily involved in this case. Peter took receipt of the parcels from the school and carefully opened them all, looking for clues about their owner and meticulously cataloguing the coins.

Finds Liaison Officer Peter Reavill recording part of the ‘Piano Hoard’. © Portable Antiquities Scheme/The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo: Emily Freeman.

The point of the Treasure Act is to ensure that important archaeological finds are reported, allowing everyone to benefit from the knowledge of their discovery, and to allow public collections (museums) the opportunity to acquire them. If a coroner agrees that a find meets the criteria for Treasure, then it belongs to the Crown, who may place it in an appropriate museum, with the finder and landowner being rewarded financially.

Most reported Treasure meets the criteria by being more than 300 years old, made of gold or silver, or constitutes a group of coins more than 300 years old or prehistoric base metal.  Over 1,000 discoveries of this type are reported and logged by the British Museum every year, and hundreds acquired by museums, enriching our culture and increasing our understanding of the past.

Part of the hoard. © Portable Antiquities Scheme/The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo: Peter Reavill.

But what about the Piano Hoard? The gold coins found within it date to 1915, so are much less than 300 years old. However, the Treasure Act also stipulates that items of any age, made substantially of gold or silver, whose original owners or heirs are unknown, and which are deemed to have been deliberately hidden with the intention of recovery, are also ‘Treasure’. This was the heart of the matter for the Coroner, who had to determine whether the Piano Hoard fitted all of these criteria. In practice, very few gold and silver items that are less than 300 years old do, because either their owners or heirs are known, or it is impossible to say whether they’d been hidden with the intention of recovery – most Treasure finds are thought to be chance losses.

Gold sovereign from the reign of Queen Victoria (1898 – Jubilee Bust of Victoria), from the hoard. © Portable Antiquities Scheme/The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo: Peter Reavill.

But central to the Piano Hoard’s story is that it certainly seems to have been put away for safekeeping. The coins are clearly made substantially of gold (the coins are all 91.7% precious metal), so the main concern for the Coroner was to investigate any information about a possible owner of the hoard or their heirs. Peter Reavill investigated leads in the archives of the piano maker, the Essex Record Office and even the Shredded Wheat company (whose packaging was found wrapped around one parcel of coins). He concluded that the coins couldn’t have been hidden earlier than the late 1920s, but nothing identifying the owner of the coins was traced.

Working with Peter and the British Museum, the Coroner issued several press releases appealing for more information. Over 40 claimants and others came forward with information but as we now know, none could prove their claim to the Coroner’s satisfaction. As such, the Coroner decided at the inquest on 20 April 2017 that the hoard met the criteria for Treasure.

That means that the Piano Hoard is now owned by the Crown, but that ownership is only exercised if a museum wishes to acquire all or part of the hoard. Saffron Walden Museum has expressed an interest in a small element of the hoard, as it would seem that it must have spent most of its life in that town.

The British Museum will now organise for the coins to be valued, first by an independent expert from the trade and then by the Treasure Valuation Committee. Saffron Walden Museum will have to pay that value to acquire the coins, with the money going to Mr Backhouse and the community college as a reward, should they wish to claim it (some rewards are waived by the finders and owners). The rest of the coins will be returned to them to do with what they will.

Some of the key people involved talk about the Piano Hoard’s discovery:

Despite the fact that the heirs of the original owner of the coins haven’t been identified, the Piano Hoard tells an intriguing story. Collections of gold and silver coins from the 19th and 20th centuries are not terribly unusual discoveries, and as recently as 2011 a hoard of gold sovereigns was found in a field in Twinstead, Essex. But that hoard consisted of just over 200 coins and indeed most others seem to be of similar or smaller amounts.

The Piano Hoard might be the largest hoard of its type found to date. It appears to have been collected over several decades and then kept safe after Britain first went off the gold standard in 1914, but it was only tucked away in the piano in the late 1920s at the earliest. Could this have been a reaction to the Depression, or events leading up to the Second World War, or to that conflict itself? What happened to the person who amassed this considerable wealth? Part of why this discovery strikes a chord with the public is that we may never know the definite answer to these questions, and we are free to wonder.

Find out more about the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Treasure Act.

On 24 September 1997 the common law of treasure trove, in place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland for more than 500 years, was replaced by the Treasure Act 1996. This marked a radical change in the fortune of objects found in these countries, allowing thousands of important finds to be acquired by public collections for all to enjoy.

A volunteer working with the Finds Liaison Officer on excavating the Watlington Hoard.

The British Museum has a central role in administering finds from England reported under the Act. As this year marks the 20th anniversary of the commencement of the Act, we are celebrating its success with a season of Treasure under the banner of our #Treasure20 campaign, in partnership with The Telegraph.

The Vale of York Hoard.

The Telegraph has kicked off the campaign by inviting readers to choose their favourite Treasure find of the last 20 years, from a shortlist of 20 compiled by a panel of expert judges:

Michael Lewis – Head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum
Mary-Ann Ochota – anthropologist, author and broadcaster
Steve Trow – Director of Research for Historic England
Mike Heyworth – Chairman of the Council for British Archaeology
Edward Besly – numismatist and Assistant Keeper at National Museum Wales
Tim Pestell – Curator of Archaeology collections at Norwich Castle Museum
Keith Miller – journalist for The Telegraph

Objects from the Ashwell Hoard.

The judges had a spirited debate as they discussed the virtues of a host of Treasure finds, but eventually they selected their 20, based on these criteria:

1. The find should advance archaeological knowledge, whether that be of a particular period of time or for the locality in which it was found.
2. The find should have been recovered in a way that is an example of best practice. (For more information, see the Code of Practice for responsible detecting.)
3. The find should add value to the national collection, whether that be of a national or local museum.

Coins from the Hackney Hoard.

Now it’s your chance to decide which of the top 20 deserves to be number one! Visit the Telegraph website to cast your vote before 14 May 2017.

For news and events relating to the #Treasure20 celebration, follow the hashtag on Twitter and check out the #Treasure20 webpage.

When working with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), the concept of a ‘forward job plan’ is somewhat laughable – your work patterns are largely dictated by finds made by detectorists. Some discoveries can completely change your career as the Frome Hoard did for me when it was found by Dave Crisp in April 2010.

Dave had dug down a foot into the ground when he started to pull out pottery and coins from the clay soil. When he realised that he had found a coin hoard, he made one of the most important decisions of his life – he filled the hole in, walked away, and contacted his local PAS Finds Liaison Officer for Wiltshire, Katie Hinds. Katie contacted her opposite number in Somerset, Anna Booth, and a professional excavation of the site took place under the direction of local archaeologist Alan Graham.

Section drawing by Alan Graham and Anna Booth.

I first heard about the hoard when Katie rang me up in London. When she gave me the diameter of the pot (45cm) I immediately knew that we had a ‘monster’ hoard of tens of thousands of coins. We agreed that the pot should be excavated in layers – this took two days and resulted in 60 separate bags from specific parts of the pot. Roger Bland (then Head of the PAS) and I collected the coins the day afterwards and drove them back to the British Museum where they were immediately entrusted to Pippa Pearce, Senior Metals Conservator, who gave them all a ‘wash and dry’ to stabilise them. We quickly ascertained that the coins weighed 160kg, and six weeks later Pippa pronounced a total of 52,503, making the find the second largest Roman hoard in Britain. Roger and I, with assistance from colleagues, then took twelve weeks to sort the coins by emperors. The coins spanned from c. AD 250 to 290 and covered about 30 rulers, terminating with Carausius, a renegade emperor who ruled in Britain from 286 to 293.

Pippa Pearce, Senior Metals Conservator, drying coins.

At the same time we were working with Steve Minnitt at the Museum of Somerset in Taunton to plan a campaign for his museum to acquire the coins. With the BBC we mounted a major publicity campaign, numerous media outlets subsequently covering the story, we put on a display of some of the coins in the British Museum, we were filmed for TV series Digging for Britain, we wrote a short introductory book (in ten days flat) and started to negotiate with the Art Fund in Somerset. After numerous events in Frome and elsewhere, £320,000 was raised to acquire the hoard, the Headley Trust and National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and the Art Fund making enormous contributions. Dave Crisp and the landowner, following the statutory requirements of the Treasure Act, shared the money.

Left: Radiate coin of Aurelian (r. AD 270–275), struck at Siscia (Sisak, Croatia).
Right: Radiate coin of Probus (r. AD 276–280), struck at Ticinum (Pavia, Italy).

We also received £105,000 from the NHMF for conservation, and for the next four years Pippa and her team worked their way through over 30,000 coins – a legacy of the Frome Hoard in the Conservation Department is ‘Coin Wednesday’ when all metal conservators work on Roman coin hoards (of which we now receive over 50 a year). A wide range of numismatists have helped to catalogue the hoard, notably Richard Abdy, Eleanor Ghey, Vincent Drost, Andrew Brown and Fernando Lopez-Sanchez, and we are now down to a few thousand coins of Claudius II. I have catalogued, with the assistance of Graham Barker, the 850 plus coins of Carausius which contain a host of new types and varieties – fortuitous because I had just been tasked to write a new edition of the Roman Imperial Coinage for Carausius and his successor Allectus. The Frome coins also suggest to me that enigmatic coins of Carausius marked with a ‘C’ were struck at his court, wherever it happened to be – the location of this mint has exercised scholars since the days of antiquarian and archaeology pioneer William Stukeley (1687–1765).

Silver denarius of Carausius (r. AD 286–293).

The hoard was buried on high ground which could be quite boggy after rain, suggesting a spring in the vicinity. This led me to believe from the outset that this hoard was probably a ritual deposit rather than a cache buried for recovery. When we discovered that the latest coins in the hoard were in fact halfway down the pot, it was clear that the pot was placed in the ground and then filled from a selection of smaller containers – I had visions of a local community making a communal offering. A reconstruction painting by Victor Ambrus, of Time Team fame, showed the possible scenario. However, my suggestions led to a number of quite aggressive emails from across the globe which did not subscribe to my ritual theory.

A reconstruction painting of Sam’s theory by Victor Ambrus.
© Victor Ambrus.

Because of the debate generated about the reason for the burial of the hoard, Roger Bland and I thought that a deeper study of Romano-British coin hoards might attract research funding. Partnering with Professors Colin Haselgrove and David Mattingly at Leicester University we were able to secure funding for a three-year project from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The monograph for this project is in preparation, but I can tell you that the Frome Hoard was indeed buried by an ancient watercourse. Furthermore, it does seem that a number of other hoards were buried for ritual reasons. The project has resulted in all Iron Age and Roman coin hoards ever found in Britain being entered on the PAS database and these records will soon be made available to the public.

Some of the coins from the hoard.

Dave Crisp’s decision to leave the hoard in the ground has had an enormous impact on other metal detectorists’ practices. Several coin hoards have been excavated professionally since 2010 and many have been retained in their pot for us to excavate at the British Museum. It will be probably the most important legacy of Dave’s discovery and one for which he deserves enormous credit.

Dave Crisp with a selection of coins from the Frome Hoard.

Finally, the hoard was the catalyst for a schools’ activity run from the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre. Children are able to take the roles of finders, curators, marketing staff and other people involved in the Frome Hoard story, and it has proven very popular.

The Frome Hoard has had an enormous impact on the life of Dave Crisp, but also on the lives of archaeologists, curators, university academics, conservators, schoolchildren and the general public. We hope that many of these experiences can be encapsulated in the final publication which we will start to work on when the cataloguing is finally completed.

Sam’s 2010 book The Frome Hoard is out of print but still available.

Find out more about Treasure 20 on the Portable Antiquities Scheme website.

You can view more images of the Frome Hoard on Flickr or see the real thing on display in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton.