THE PRESIDENT’S REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2007- 2008

(Delivered by Nicholas Mayhew, Vice-President, because of the absence of the President due to ill-health.)

The ongoing process of modernisation of the Society is progressing well. In particular the Privy Council have approved our new rules, and the new look website with much additional information has proved popular. Thanks to Dan Pett and Jenni Adam for their work on the website.
After many years of maintaining a static subscription fee, it has proved necessary to raise the amount from £35 to £40. This increase is less than the rate of inflation since the last rise, and reflects rising postage costs, and a difficult economic situation, which affects the yield from our investments. I hope the Society will soon notice the benefit of the change in terms of its ability to support the numismatic studies of its fellows and in the wider world.
The lectures this year held by the Society both here at the Warburg Institute and also at the British Museum have held up the high standard and considerable interest that fellows have come to expect. As usual we had a varied selection. The series began in October with Professor Oguz Tekin of Istanbul University who gave us the latest information on his excavation coins from Aenus in Thrace. In January, Helen Wang told us about the life of Kutsuki Masatsuna and the Tamba Collection of Japanese Coins at the British Museum. Jere Bacharach brought us ‘Imitation to Innovation: the Gold and Silver issues of the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik (AD 685-705, Hijra 66-86)’. In May, Ian Carradice kindly gave us a lecture on ‘The Roman Imperial Coinage of the Flavian Emperors’. Our lecture in December, after which we enjoyed our Christmas party, was made all the more special with the presentation of the Society’s annual Medal to Wolfgang Hahn, Director of the Institut fur Numismatik und Geldgeschichte at the University of Vienna, who afterwards spoke on Christian symbolism on Aksumite coins.
The format of ‘Show and Tell’ meeting provides a platform for both new and more experienced speakers. In February we heard six fellows speak on a wide-ranging series of objects. These began with Richard Ashton who spoke about ‘a coin from the Carian city of Mobolla’. Robert Bracey talked about ‘a Recent Bactrian Greek hoard’. Jez Stanley described his latest Heliocles II die analysis. John Perkins commented upon the ‘Three Headed Shiva on the Reverse of Wima Kadphises’ Copper Coinage. Marcus Phillips discussed ‘Some new crusader varieties from the Harim hoard’. Philip Mernick had found some ‘Useful tables to the Journal of the Asiatic Society by James Prinsep’.
Two of our evening meetings were devoted to seminars. The first in November focused on recent coin hoards from Britain, with presentations from: Ian Leins: East Leicestershire hoards of Iron Age and Roman coins; Richard Abdy: Elveden hoard of Carausian and Allectan coins: Gareth Williams: Vale of York hoard of Anglo-
Saxon and Viking coins; Barrie Cook: Revisiting the Beaulah Hill medieval gold coin hoard.

The second seminar in April was on Counterfeits and Forgeries, introduced by Jenni Adam: Duncan Hook: Money under the microscope: science and the identification of forgeries; Kevin Clancy: The counterfeiting of silver in the eighteenth century Eleni Papaefthymiou: Modern counterfeits of ancient coins: three cases. We owe our thanks to Jenni Adam and Sam Morehead for the organisation of these meetings.
Last year the RNS/BNS Joint Summer Meeting was held at Pallant House Gallery Chichester. Papers were presented on the topic ‘Currency in Crisis’. We look forward to the next one to be held at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge entitled ‘Art in Coinage’ on July 5. None of this could be done without the hard work done by Kevin Clancy, Director of the British Numismatic Society who organises these meetings.
We are pleased to announce that our 2008 medallist is Mark Blackburn, Keeper of Coins at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Unfortunately this year the Parkes Weber Prize was not awarded.
This year the Society’s Council was able to award over £5500 from its dedicated Grant Funds. The Linecar Fund continues its support for the British Association of Numismatic Societies’ autumn weekend held at the University of Manchester and its annual congress which will be held this year on 5-7 September at the Rutland Hall in the University of Nottingham.
The Marshall fund was able to provide £500 to purchase numismatic books for the students of Dr M. Isabel Gargevich of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The Society awards the Lhotka Prize to a book that will be particularly helpful to the elementary student of numismatics. There were several deserving entries and after much discussion the Council decide to split the prize between: Encounters: Travel and Money in the Byzantine World by Eurydice Georganteli and Barrie Cook. The other winning entry was Coins of England and the United Kingdom Standard Catalogue of British Coins, 43rd Edition 2008 by Philip Skingley.
The Kreitman Fund has supported David Jongeward, from Canada for his work on Kushan coins and Professor Nasim Khan Grant, Peshawar University, Pakistan in the publication of the journal Gandharan Studies, featuring archaeological finds of ancient coins in Pakistan.
The Lowick Fund has supported Susmita Basu Majumdar, University of Calcutta, India for her work on Indian punch-marked coins, Mr P. Novak, Prague, working on Seljuk coins and Mr Vincent West, UK, working on Axumite coins.
The Martin Price Fund has provided for Mr Jay Macanally, Australia to continue his work on the fourth century coinage of Caunus and Halicarnassus and the use of digital images from the ANS and BM, for possible reproduction.
The Society has brought out two new Special Publications during the year: The Bronze Coinage of the Achaian Koinon, The Currency of a Federal Ideal, by Jennifer A.W Warren, (RNS SP No. 42) London 2007. Greek Imperial Denominations, ca. 200-275, A Study of the Roman Provincial Bronze Coinages of Asia Minor, by Ann Johnston, (RNS SP No. 43) London 2007.
We congratulate their authors on the excellent additions to the study of ancient coins and thank our special publications editor Richard Ashton for seeing them through the editing and printing processes.

The Society has seen a considerable rise in both the number of ordinary fellows and also from libraries who, as institutional fellows, receive the Numismatic Chronicle including several from Eastern Europe and for the first time from South America.
Sadly the Society has lost nine fellows and former fellows in recent years: Mr Graham Pollard, elected in 1956, former Keeper of Coins and Deputy Director at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, who was the leading specialist in Italian medals of his generation; Dr Michael Hendy, elected in 1962, a leading scholar in Byzantine coinage and economic history; Mr Eduardo Levante, elected in 1967, a renowned collector and expert on Roman Imperial coins; Mr Joel Malter, elected in 1970, the well-known and respected American coin dealer; Mr David Corbel, elected in 1977, a collector, who was kind enough to leave the Society a bequest of £1000. Mr Bernard Schulte, elected in 1976, a collector and dealer, who had been a director of Munzen & Medaillen AG Basel, Switzerland; Professor Frank Spooner, elected in 1979, a leading early modern economic historian, formerly professor in the Department of Economic History, University of Durham and Director of the Institute of European Studies. I have also learned that our former fellow Mrs Stella Greenall (elected 1993) is terminally ill. She was well known to many fellows and donated the collection of Venetian coins belonging to her husband Mr Philip Greenall to the British Museum and helped accession it. Apart from that her main numismatic interest was in eighteenth century tokens. It is with much sadness that we also mark the death of Dr Kaelyn MacGregor our former assistant secretary (1992-9).
On a happier note, it is a pleasure to record the following honours received by Fellows: Dr Roger Bland, OBE, for services to the Portable Antiquities Scheme; our President, Joe Cribb, Honorary Fellowships of the Austrian Numismatic Society, Vienna and the Accademia Giampaoli per la Medaglia d’Arte, Rome; our Honorary Fellow Professor Michael Metcalf, the British Academy’s triennial Derek Allen Prize for Numismatics and the Jacob Meshorer Medal of the Israeli Numismatic Society; Professor Francois de Callatay, the Prix Francqui of the Fondation Francqui, Brussels; Professor Peter Robert Franke, the Archer M. Huntington Medal of the American Numismatic Society, New York.
As ever the President is very grateful to his colleagues on the Council for their support and encouragement through the year. My particular thanks to all the Society’s officers, our Treasurer John Morcom as well as our Secretaries, Sam Moorhead and Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, whose steadfast labours ensure the Society’s daily business proceeds effortlessly. I am also very grateful to Tony Merson and our auditors who maintain the financial structure of the Society. Our editors, Richard Ashton and Marcus Phillips continue to do their hard work to a high standard and are appreciated for their sound judgement and appropriate sense of urgency. I also wish to thank John Roberts Lewis, our Librarian and those who assist him. John manages the Library on behalf of this and our sister Society and does an admirable job balancing the demands of both. Our assistant Secretary, Henry Lythe continues to provide the Secretaries and the Society with much appreciated support. I would also like to give my thanks to our departing Council members Eurydice Georganteli, Eleni Papaefthymiou and Hadrien Rambach for their service to the Society.

Finally I have the unusual privilege of being able to thank our President, Joe Cribb, in his own address, for his unfailing attention to the Society’s affairs. We wish him a speedy recovery.

THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS
Due to ill health the President was unable to deliver his annual Presidential Address.