Work report: Over 1,300 oriental coins from the “Century Collection” online
The rich collection of oriental coins, which was acquired by the Coin Cabinet in Vienna in spring 2021, is considered a "collection of the century".
Collected by the Austrian physician and pharmacologist Dr Erich Lindpaintner (1914–1989), this collection includes a total of 1,685 ancient oriental coins, particularly from the Iranian World. About three quarters of this collection consist of coins of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), the purchase of which almost doubled the Sasanian part of our Coin Cabinet. To these should be added coins of the Kushan Empire (including 109 gold pieces, some of rare types) and Gupta Empire, those of the Arabo-Sasanians and the Ispahbeds of Tabaristan as well as coins of the so-called “Iranian Huns” and “Western Turks”.
One of the highlights in the Lindpaintner collection is a hoard of 171 silver drachms from the 13th regnal year of the Sasanian King Khosrow II. With the exception of a single piece, all of the pieces come from the mint of Bishapur in southern Iran. What is special about these 170 Bishapur coins is that they were struck with only twelve obverse and eleven reverse dies. This striking combination of dies clearly shows that they were produced in a very short period of time - perhaps in just a few days.
Between summer 2021 and summer 2022, Ehsan Shavarebi, MA, documented and digitised the Sasanian part of the Lindpaintner collection. To date, all Sasanian coins as well as parts of the rest of the collection have been completely recorded, of which more than 1,300 pieces are already online in IKMK. Since the beginning of November 2023 the processing and digitisation of ancient oriental coins continues. In this phase, the processing of the remaining parts of the Lindpaintner Collection will first be completed in order to then continue the digitisation of the Sasanian coins from the old inventory.
