Abstract
THE Department of Coins of the British Museum was considerably enriched some time ago by the valuable collection of Early English coins, bequeathed by the late Mr. T. G. Barnett, of Birmingham, which includes some five hundred silver pennies of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. These begin with a series of Mercia, including fine portrait coins of Oifa (A.D. 758-796) of workmanship unrivalled until the reign of Henry VII, and the still rarer portrait coin of his queen Cynethryth, the only queen to appear on coins until Mary Tudor. In describing this collection, Mr. J. Alien1, keeper of the Coin Department, points out that “the historical value of the Anglo-Saxon coinage lies in the fact that it records rulers otherwise unknown, illustrates by its mints the rise and fall of Kingdoms, and particularly well illustrates the struggle with the Vikings and Danes".
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References
Brit. Mus. Quart., 10, 124 (March, 1936).
Cantor Lectures on “Alloys used for Coinage”, Roberts-Austen, J. Roy. Soc. Arts (1884).
“The Metals in Antiquity”, W. Gowland . Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 1912.
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Smith, E. The Standard of Anglo-Saxon Silver Pennies. Nature 140, 1085–1086 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/1401085a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1401085a0