Join us as Robert Kool, senior curator of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Coin Department, shares the importance of coins and how coins as material culture revolutionize our understanding of the New Testament era.
The vaults of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Coin Department currently house more than 800,000 coins spanning a period of more than 2,500 years, from the invention of coinage in the seventh century BC to the present day. These coins form an integral part of the archaeological treasures of the Israel State Collections in the State of Israel. The coin collection, with more than 140,000 identified specimens, is continually growing with finds from numerous excavations conducted in Israel every year.
Join us as we learn about the importance of coinage!
Speaker
Dr. Robert Kool
Dr. Kool heads the Coin Department of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), where he leads a team of full-time numismatists and archaeologists responsible for the registration, identification, research, and publication of coin finds from numerous archaeological excavations in Israel. The IAA Coin Department holds more than half a million coins and hoards from excavations and provenanced finds dating from the 5th century BCE till the end of the Ottoman period, some 2,600 years, constituting one the largest scientific numismatic databases of its kind in the world.
He has published extensively on coins and monetary history, based on hitherto unpublished excavations finds from hundreds of sites. His current research includes also medieval seals and study of early Islamic, Fatimid, and Mamluk hoards and coin finds.
Currently, he is working jointly with colleagues from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on a new volume dedicated to the medieval coinages of the Crusader States and Cilician Armenia, part of the 20-volume Medieval European Coinage (MEC) series published at Cambridge University.