Cologne Coin Research Portal - Refined Scientific Indexing and Interactive Presentation of a Core Collection for Roman Ancient Egypt

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Gregor Staab; Dr. Andreas Weber
• Subject Area: Ancient History ; Image and Language Processing, Computer Graphics and Visualisation, Human Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 531062536

The Coin Collection of the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of Cologne has gained the status of a scientific Core Collection through a donation in the years 2020-23: its main section of coinage by Roman emperors from Alexandria in Egypt now comprises 7,000 objects complemented by more than 500 Ptolemaic and 320 Late Antique coins from the former capital on the Nile delta. One of the world's most important public institutions for the numismatics of Greco-Roman Egypt is thus located in Cologne; this specific field of research is of overarching importance for historical questions of politics, religion, culture and economics in antiquity. Against this background, the former digitisation project "Cologne Coin Portal", which has been carried out with the University Library of Cologne since 2011 and was funded by the DFG from 2012 to 2016, is to be developed into a dynamic research platform on the basis of a refined indexing system and methods of the Digital Humanities. The system will be made available to other collections via regulated Internet access in order to index and network their coin holdings, in accordance with subject-specific and technical quality standards. Including the most important numismatic LOD-specifications (NuDS/Nomisma, NDP Berlin, RPC resources), in consultation with NFDI-consortia of the humanities a detailed indexing will be created that is oriented to the coins’ potential as technically and scientifically analysable objects, as original ancient script carriers, and as miniature artifacts of religious-political propaganda: Thus, the data model will be extended to integrate already existing measured values, for example, of density and magnetic susceptibility, and to systematically manage metal-analytical measurements collected locally with XRF-spectroscopy in the future. Based on the previous philological record of the legends, we will index monograms, mint marks and counterstamps in connection with their layout considering the newest developments of affine digital edition techniques in Byzantine sphragistics (TEI/Epidoc-SigiDoc). The often complex iconographic compositions, interweaving Greco-Roman and Egyptian motifs, will be analysed with a hierarchical keyword matrix of image elements. The current multifaceted catalogue-like presentation will be linked to reference portals, expanded with specialist information and enriched with interactive services. The generic approach is a model of interaction in which fine structured metadata and digitised items can be variably related to each other, in order, for example, to visualise production batches and relationship groups of coins or to generate statistical diagrams according to self-selected parameters. The future "Cologne Coin Research Portal" will enable users to investigate various numismatic questions in detail and to develop hypotheses, by using a pool of physical, epigraphic and iconographic data.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Participating Institution: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin ; Bode-Museum, Münzkabinett; Universität zu Köln; Philosophische Fakultät; Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH)
• Co-Investigators: Christoph Bartmann; Oliver Flimm; Dr. Claes Neuefeind; Claudia Piesche