The Hermitage guide

The unceasing growth of the Hermitage collection in the 1920s and 30s was largely promoted by the official policy of concentrating the more valuable numismatic objects in several major Soviet museums. At this time the Hermitage received a number of former private collections, among them the Stroganov collection totalling 53,000 coins and medals, and the numismatic collections previously housed in the Academy of Arts, the Pavlovsk Palace, Leningrad University, etc. At the beginning of the 1930s, several collections of coins were transferred to the Hermitage from the Academy of Sciences, particularly from its former Asiatic Museum (30,000 items).

The main sections of the Department are as follows: the coinages of Ancient Greece and Rome (where Byzantine coins are also kept); the coinages of the Orient; Russia; Western Europe; and the section of medals, orders and badges.

The collection of classical coins was formed on the basis of numerous private collections. Pride of place is held by coins discovered on the northern and eastern shores of the Black Sea. Among these the gold staters of the fourth century B.C., minted in Panticapaeum (present-day Kerch), are of especially high artistic merit. Their obverse shows a satyr, and the reverse depicts a gryphon standing on a corn-ear. Whereas the gryphon was considered to be the protector of treasures, the corn-ear symbolized wheat, the main wealth of the Bosporan kingdom at the time. Most gold staters came to the Museum in the late nineteenth century from excavation sites near Kerch. Other towns on the northern Black Sea coast, primarily Olbia and Cher-sonesus, yielded a large number of extremely interesting complexes of coins as well.

The Byzantine collection is amply represented by coins of the sixth and seventh centuries, silver miliaresia of the tenth and eleventh centuries, and gold coins including some rare specimens struck by Philippicus Bardanes (711—713).

The Oriental section possesses over 230,000 coins. Compared to the classical section which was augmented by archaeological finds, the collection of Oriental coins, especially Kufic and Juchian ones, largely benefited from the discovery of hoards. Most items of the brilliant Sassanian collection derive from hoards found in the Caucasus. The gold Sassanian coins include a unique double denarius of Hormizd II (303—309). Its obverse shows the profile portrait of the ruler wearing a diadem-like crown topped by a bird of prey. The reverse depicts a fire-altar, shaped as a column with a capital, above which tongues of flame rise. On either side of the altar are two figures, one of which also wears Hormizd’s crown.

Thanks to accessions from the hoards, the Hermitage collection of Kufic, especially Samanid, coins is now one of the best in the world. In addition to the above-mentioned dirhem with the name of Zubaydah, there is another fine dirhem of brilliant workman ship, minted by Daisam ibn Ibrahim al-Qurdi, a statesman who lived in the tenth century and at one time ruled Azerbaijan and Eastern Armenia.

Among the coins of the Mongol dynasties are some 9,000 Juchian specimens. One of the rare coins in this collection was minted by Turakina, widow of Gengis Khan.

The small Georgian collection (1,775 items) includes several rare pieces, such as figured copper coins minted by Georgi IV Lasha, the co-ruler of Queen Tamar and later the ruler of Georgia, and a fish-shaped copper coin dating from 1210, the only known sample of its kind.

The collection of coins of Cilician Armenia is almost of the same size as the Georgian one.

There is an interesting collection of stamps of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, totalling 350 specimens. 340 of these were used in minting gold, silver and copper coins in the Khiva Khanate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Incidentally, they were found by chance below the stage of the Hermitage Theatre in the 1930s.

Prominent among the coinages of the Far East is the group of silver and gold Chinese ingots (about 600 items, 3 in gold), forming one of the best collections in the world. Varying in weight, these jüanpao ingots were widely used in the Chinese trade in modern times; they always bear the date and mint officina, weight, and various wishes of well-being.

Most richly represented in the Numismatic Department are the coinages of Western Europe (over 330,000 items plus coins from America and Australia kept in the same section).

Coins of the barbarian states and of the Carolingians constitute a relatively modest part of the collection. Among 150 gold Merovingian coins are such rare pieces as two tremisses with the name of St Eligius, or Eloi. The gold coinage of the Carolingians, which was generally very scarce, is illustrated by several specimens, notably the gold solidus struck in Dorestad (Holland). This coin was sent to the Memorial Charlemagne Exhibition held in Aachen in 1965.