The Coins of Alexander Map provides an easy to use tool for not only visually identifying mints in relation to other mints or cities, but also for filtering on these mints to find those with unique characteristics. For instance, you can filter on mints that stopped production upon Alexander’s death, or those that did not start minting coins until after he died. You can find mints that struck coins in specific denominations or those that produced only a few different “types” (according to Martin Price’s 1991 work).

This tool is also intended to provide a general overview of mints that struck coins in Alexander’s name. You can find a particular mint from the “Mints” panel on the left side of the map and click on one of these mints to view a summary of information about that mint, as well as automatically zooming-in on that mint on the map. You can also click one of the mint markers on the map itself to open the summary for that particular mint.

The gallery below shows an example coin and summary information for each “type” according to Price. These types will be shown according to the filters applied. If no filters are applied, it will show all Price types by default. If you click on a mint from the Mint list or from the Map, the gallery will display only the types that belong to that mint.

This tool is still a work in progress and filters may be added or removed in the future. The core functionality will remain the same, and that is to provide a tool for analysing the mints of Alexander, and not the different types from each mint. I will be working on a tool specifically for filtering on the different Price types, similar to how PELLA currently works.

The map filters can be accessed by clicking on the “Filters” tab from the panel to the left of the map. There are two types of filters: dropdowns and inputs. The dropdown filters allow you to select one or more values at a time. Each value in a given dropdown filter are combined using an “OR” operator. For example, if you select “Abydus” and “Babylon” from the Mint(s) filter, the map will be filtered to show both the Abydus and Babylon mint. However, if you then set the Region(s) filter to “Egypt”, there would be no results as two different dropdown filters combine together with an “AND” operator. Since neither Abydus or Babylon are located in Egypt, no mints would match the filters and the map would be empty.

The input filters can only accept one value per input field but each filter has two input fields, one to set the minimum value and one to set the maximum value. You can, however, just set one, you don’t need to set both. For example, to view all mints that opened after 323 BC, you can set the first input field of Date Opened to 322 and not set the second input field (the max value). If you want to see all mints that opened specifically in 322 BC, set both input fields to 322.

To demonstrate how the logic would work using the examples above, the logic would read as follows:

Mint="Abydus OR Babylon" AND Region="Egypt" AND Date Opened="from 322 to []"

This would translate as: the mint is equal to Abydus or Babylon, and is in the region Egypt, and did not open until 322 BC or later. Currently it is not possible to have “OR” conditions between filters, such as Mint=”Abydus” OR Region=”Egypt”.

Moving around the map: left click and drag with your mouse

Rotate: right click with your mouse and rotate by moving your mouse in a circular direction.

Zoom in/out on an area: hold down shift and draw an area on the map by left clicking with your mouse

Zoom in on a mint: click the marker for that mint to automatically zoom-in on that location

Zoom in/out on the cursor: scroll using your mouse scroll wheel

View 3D terrain: right click and move your mouse forwards or backwards to tilt the view. Alternatively, hold Ctrl/command on your keyboard and move your mouse.

Images of coins shown in the gallery below are used courtesy of the following organizations:

ANS: American Numismatic Society (CC BY-NC 4.0)

BM: The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

BnF: Bibliothèque nationale de France / gallica.bnf.fr

Münzkabinett Berlin: Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (Public Domain Mark 1.0)

Data pertaining to the mints, Price types, and individual coins from the ANS collection are used in accordance with CC-BY license 4.0 and courtesy of nomisma.org and the American Numismatic Society. This data has been modified in some respects, such as through aggregation or formatting, and may change at any time owing to any corrections or additions.

The Coins of Alexander Map tool and artemis-collection.com are not affiliated with or endorsed by the American Numismatics Society or the any of the aforementioned collections.