A medieval coin hoard of possible Anatolian origin in the Gabinetto Numismatico e Medagliere, Musei del Castello Sforzesco, Milano

The hoard which we will analyse here was acquired by an unknown Milanese collector from an unknown Swiss dealer at one point in the nineteenth century. From this Milanese collector it passed into the main state-owned numismatic collection in Milan, known at the time as the ‘Brera’. This also occurred in the nineteenth century. The numismatic collection of Milan had first been founded at the Milan mint in 1808. In 1817 it was transferred to the Brera library and collection. In 1913 these Brera coins were combined with the civic collection of Milan to form the new ‘Gabinetto Numismatico e Medagliere’, of the ‘Musei del Castello Sforzesco’. While at the Brera in the nineteenth century, the present hoard had already been given the name ‘Oriental hoard’. It reached the new Gabinetto Numismatico in a bag in 1913, and it was classified and put into trays in the 1920s by the then curator of coins Ludovico Laffranchi. <br>It will be my argument in this presentation that the most likely geographical origin of this collector’s hoard was western Anatolia, for compositional and historical reasons. A second, though less likely, origin would in turn have been the eastern Mainland Greek regions of Attika and Boiotia.