The Monetarization of Egypt from the Beginning of the Ptolemies to the End of Second Century AD

Date
Thu March 18th 2021, 10:00 - 11:00am
Event Sponsor
Department of Classics
Location
Zoom Link (Pre-registration required)

The final Stanford Humanities Center Data Scarcity in the Ancient Mediterranean workshop event of the winter term will take place on Thursday, March 18th at 10:00 (PT) via Zoom. We will be hearing from Thomas Faucher (CNRS/Univ. Bordeaux Montaigne). Professor Faucher will be giving a talk on the monetarization of Egypt from the beginning of the Ptolemies to the end of second century AD.  A discussion will follow the presentation. Below you can find the abstract and bio. We are looking forward to seeing you all!

Ptolemy I’s decision to close the Egyptian monetary system in the early third century BC fostered a very special environment for the deployment of Egyptian coinage. When the Romans took over Egypt and integrated this regional monetary system into the larger system of the Empire, this monetary autarky allowed Egyptian coinage to develop hybrid forms. In this lecture, by going beyond the study of the Egyptian iconography that has primarily interested art historians, I will present the material resulting from archaeological excavations, and examine the evolution of coinage and its integration into the economy of the countryside during the Ptolemaic and early Roman periods. 

Thomas Faucher is an economic historian who specializes in the production and circulation of coinage in ancient Egypt, as well the methods of mineral extraction used in its manufacture. He holds a PhD in Archaeology from the University Paris-Sorbonne, where he was also a postdoctoral fellow as part of the Nomisma program funded by the French National Research Agency. In 2011, he joined the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo (IFAO) as a scientific member and supervised the "Egyptian Gold" program for two years. Since 2018, he has been directing the French archaeological mission of the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Currently, he is a research fellow at the Institute for Research on Archaeomaterials in Orleans where he continues his research on numismatics and the monetary history of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. The interdisciplinary approaches Faucher has developed in numismatic research made it possible to revisit and refine our knowledge of this period of ancient Egyptian history. He is the recipient of the Allier de Hauteroche Prize from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres for his book Frapper monnaie (Minting Coins) and the bronze medal of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in 2017. He was the Invited Scholar for the Summer Seminar of the American Numismatic Society (New York), and a Robinson Visiting Scholar at the Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum in association with the Kraay Visitorship at Wolfson College, Oxford. He recently defended his Habilitation entitled “An Archaeology of Egyptian Coinage”.  

Selected books:  

T. Faucher, A. Meadows, C. Lorber (eds), Egyptian Hoards I, The Ptolemies, Bibliothèque d'Etude 168, Ifao, Cairo, 2017.  

T. Faucher (ed.), Money Rules! The Monetary Economy of Egypt, from Persians until the Beginning of Islam, Bibliothèque d’Etude 176, Cairo, 2020. 

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