OPENING OF THE RE-EXHIBITION OF THE HALL OF DONORS
«ANDREAS BOUZAS. AT THE DANCE OF THE GREAT DONORS OF THE NUMIC MUSEUM”
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, AT 19:00
On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 19:00, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Culture and Sports, Dr. Maria Andreadaki Vlazaki, will inaugurate at the Numismatic Museum the Re-Exhibition of the Donors’ Hall of Ilios Melathros: “Andreas Bouzas. At the Dance of the Great Donors of the Numismatic Museum”.
The purpose of the Re-Exhibition is to present to future visitors of the Museum two hundred and seventy (270) rare and very special and unique gold, silver and copper coins, which it recently acquired thanks to the generous donation of the Andreas Bouzas family.
Andreas Bouzas (1922-2013) an internationally renowned ophthalmologist, was born in Paleochori, Syrakou, in Tzoumerka, Epirus. A true son of Epirus and an admirer of the great Epirote benefactors and donors, such as the Zosima brothers, Andreas Bouzas collected during his life many works of art of ancient and modern Greek civilization, with the sole purpose of having them come to the Greek state and be exhibited in Greek museums, especially those of his beloved homeland. In accordance with their father’s wishes, Eleni, Eurydice and Lydia Bouza donated his Collections of ancient artifacts and two thousand seven (2,007) coins to the Archaeological Museum and the Byzantine Museum of Ioannina, while enriching the acquisitions of the Numismatic Museum with nine hundred and thirty-six (936) exceptional and rare coins, mainly from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and the Byzantine Empire.
The most remarkable part of Andreas Bouzas’ great donation was included in the permanent exhibition of the Numismatic Museum and is presented in two display cases in the Donors’ Hall. Two special numismatic sets are exhibited, which significantly enrich the respective Collections of the Museum, making them even more sought-after internationally. In the first showcase of the Re-Exhibition, eighty-eight (88) coins of the Ptolemaic kingdom are presented, eighty-three silver and five copper, which uniquely complement the John Demetrius Collection with the approximately ten thousand gold, silver and copper coins of the Macedonian kingdom of Egypt. These are monetary issues of the most important of the Ptolemaic kings. The Ptolemies VIII and IX are represented with the most pieces, followed by Ptolemy X, Ptolemy XI in his co-reign with Cleopatra III, while the whole is completed by a sufficient number of coins from the co-reigns of Cleopatra VII with Ptolemy XIII, XIV and XV. The silver Ptolemaic tetradrachms display a consolidated and stable iconography. On the obverse they depict the portrait of the ruler, as established, static and without prosographical features, by Ptolemy I of Lagos, the so-called Saviour, founder of the dynasty. On the reverse side, the emblems of the House of Lagids dominate, the eagle and the thunderbolt, the two sacred symbols of Olympian Zeus, from whom the dynasty originated, according to the tradition of the Macedonian kings. In the second showcase of the Re-exhibition eighty-two (82) gold, silver and amber, late Roman and Byzantine coins are exhibited. These coinages are mostly in excellent condition and very rare. The most interesting of these are the gold coins of the Isaurian and Amorian dynasties, the white amber roughs of the Empire of Nicaea and the hyperpyra of the Palaiologos. In this group we observe the iconographic evolution of Byzantine coinage, before and after the Iconoclasm, with the Isaurians depicting on their coins only the sacred sign of the Cross and the reappearance of Christ Pantocrator on the obverse of the solidi after the restoration of the Icons in 843 AD. The iconography of Byzantine coinage was later enriched with representations of the Virgin Mary, the patron saints and the archangels.
The scientific supervision and general coordination of the exhibition is the responsibility of the Director of the Epigraphic and Numismatic Museum, Dr. Georgios Kakavas, with the assistance of the scientific staff of the Numismatic Museum. The museological study is signed by Yorka Nikolaou, historian – numismatician and the museographic study by Dr. Marianna Savrami, architect and engineer, while Margarita Sorotou participated in the design of the re-exhibition. The conservation and photography of the coins were carried out by the staff of the Museum’s conservation laboratory.