Museum NOotreEs 9

The Historical Interest of Coins

By Harvey KEATS

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HAVE always been interested in coins. As a child, I can remember noting with

amazement the enormous variety circulating in the eastern Mediterranean, particularly

at Port Said, and asking questions about their point of origin. I can still feel the thriil
with which I acquired my first Roman, a worn, battered piece of copper, but with the
inscription still legible, and can recall to this day the sudden realization that my Latin
lessons in school undoubtedly had their uses after all. So I very soon came to look on
iny small hoard, not with the usual collector’s passion, but from the point of view of
their historical interest. A rare specimen has never interested me as such, but one which
would help me recall some interesting or notable historical person or event would give
me all the thrills which the usual collector experiences when he acquires a rarity. This
short digression will account for the selection of the coins I have picked from the
Museum collection as subjects for these notes.

LT 8

Corns FROM City COLLECTION

The first is a small bit of silver, little larger than a five cent piece, bearing on one
side a head in Norman helmet and the inscription “Boemund.’ On the reverse is a
cross and “Antiochia.” Some will say, “This is no rarity.” True; but to me it is of
far greater interest than a rarity. How can I view it without recalling that most heroic
and most corrupt age when for the first time in history Christendom was united and
set in battle array against the ever-advancing ranks of Mohammedanism? When
Boemond of Tarentum, a younger son of the Duke of Apulia, but a most famous knight-
errant and military commander, was chosen one of the leaders by the crusading armies