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Back to Italy the roman coins found in Libya
December 28, 2001
ROME, 28 DIC - Beyond 100,000 coins in silver-plated bronze of imperial
age, discovered during eighties at Measured in Libya, have been entrusted from the Department of the
Antiquity of the Arabic Republic Popular Libyan Socialist to the CNR to
study and restore them. It is the greatest finding of coins of the ancient
world of ever: the coins cover a datable period between the end of the
3rd and the first decades of 4th century, from the age of Diocleziano to that one of Costantino the
large one.
"We can finally analyze - the Director of the Institute for the Technologies Applied to the Cultural Assets of the
CNR, Salvatore Garraffo explains - the greatest patrimony of coins
officially known of the ancient world, joint miraculously intact to us thanks
to the particular way of conservation in large amphoras or "olles", that
they came buried to groups around to a small peasant building to protect
them, probably, from an imminent danger".
The restoration job, in part already started, will use a new set of portable instrumentation not destructive
for the characterization of the alloy and the varnishing of the coins, developed in collaboration
with the Laboratory of the South (Catania) of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics.
More details in the italian page
Massiminian roman Folles, AD 286-305
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