“For me as the head of a university collection, it is a little painful that such an exciting object is leaving our collection. But for me as an archaeologist, it is a happy day that this marble portrait is returning to its place of origin and can be viewed and examined again in its original historical context together with other pieces from the same workshops,” said Prof. Achim Lichtenberger, Director of the Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster, today (November 19) at the handover of a Roman portrait head to the Archaeological Museum in Thessaloniki. It had found its way to Münster under unexplained circumstances - the reason for University Rector Prof. Johannes Wessels to return the marble piece to the greek State.

On Friday (22 November), in the run up to the "Day of Ancient Numismatics" (TAN), Dr Simone Killen from the Commission for Ancient History and Epigraphy of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) will give a public evening lecture on the topic of "The coins found at Olympia: from the handwritten inventory list to the online database". She will be speaking from 6.15 pm in lecture theatre F2 of the Fürstenberghaus. Registration is not required and admission is free. Registration is also not necessary for the actual TAN on Saturday (23 November), interested parties can simply drop by from 10 am to 6 pm in the lecture hall of the LWL Museum of Art and Culture, Domplatz 10. The programme includes lectures such as ‘Money/coins and humour in antiquity: a serious topic?’, poster presentations on current research topics and short reports from museums and collections.

The North German Hanseatic League, originally an association of merchants, quickly developed into an important factor not only in the economic but also in the political and cultural sphere. In order to facilitate and promote trade, the participating cities came together in various regional coinage associations. However, competition also arose between individual regions, for example between the leading city of Lübeck and the Pomeranian cities, which agreed on a standardised currency structure, namely marks and pfennigs, but minted different coins. An example of this is our ‘Coin of the Month’, a witte (worth the equivalent of four pfennigs) from Greifswald.

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