ANS MANTIS DATABASE HOSTS 100,000 COIN IMAGES

Continually adding to an already comprehensive database, the American Numismatic Society (ANS) is happy to announce that the 100,000th image has been added to the MANTIS database. MANTIS (A Numismatic Technologies Integration Service) provides information on nearly 700,000 records for objects in the ANS collection.

The 100,000th image displayed is an aureus, a gold Roman Imperial coin from AD 196–211, featuring Julia Domna’s portrait on the obverse and the goddess Cybele seated on a throne in a car drawn by four lions on the reverse.

Dr. Gilles Bransbourg, Adjunct Curator of Roman Coins at the ANS, commented on the selection, “the American Numismatic Society’s long-term commitment in the field of digitization towards the larger public is unique. Such an investment contributes to enhancing global knowledge, access, and understanding of ancient and modern numismatics alike. The addition of our 100,000th image is a momentous development in our goal to continually enhance and expand this extensive database of worldwide coinage.”

Bransbourg offered further comment on the significance of Julia Domna, a ruling empress and wife and mother to emperors. “This rare piece displays a spectacular, strong, and symbolic reverse, associating the empress with the goddess Cybele. Cybele was called Magna Mater, the Great Mother, and her cult derived from very ancient Asian beliefs that were incorporated into the Greco-Roman pantheon as Eastern traditions moved West. Julia Domna was herself born in Syria, and her husband Septimius in Africa, a tribute to Roman multiculturalism.”

The coin can be viewed on the ANS website at http://numismatics.org/collection/1955.191.22.

As a search and display tool, MANTIS allows users to search the ANS’s massive holdings for items of interest through a series of easy to use screens; it also allows users to perform statistical and geographical analyses of groups of numismatic items. A related project, Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE), an online tool to help in the identification, cataloging, and research of the coinage of the Roman Empire, is a joint initiative between the ANS and the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) at New York University. It will ultimately record every published type of Roman Imperial Coinage. It is funded in part by a generous grant from the Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities, made as part of the Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program, which will provide for the full implementation of OCRE.

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