About PELLA

PELLA is a project of the American Numismatic Society co-directed by Dr. Peter van Alfen and Ethan Gruber. The web database, based on the Numishare platform, has been developed by Ethan Gruber. Its further development is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of the broader Hellenistic Royal Coinages project.

Substantial work in developing PELLA has been carried out by Prof. Andrew Meadows (Oxford University). Cynthia Cheng, Yoorim Choi, Sylvia Czander, Elena Ferrero, Disnarda Pinilla, and Clara Sanchez provided considerable assistance in organizing material within the ANS collection. Alan Roche is responsible for the photographs of ANS coins. At the British Museum, Martin Price, former Curator of Greek coins, was instrumental in cataloguing this material. Amelia Dowler is the British Museum's current curator of this series. Prof. Bernhard Weisser and Dr. Karsten Dahmen have catalogued the material at the Münzkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. At the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF) Caroline Carrier catalogued the Alexander types, while Simon Glenn did the same at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.

Mark Pyzyk drew the monograms from Price and organized the concordance between monogram IDs and Price type numbers.

Translations have been provided by the following:

  • German: Karsten Dahmen
  • French: Frédérique Duyrat

More about Le Rider numbering and page correspondence

Since Le Rider’s study was not a typology per se, but rather a die study, the typology presented here is formed from gathering the related types identified by Le Rider under a single heading. Thus the type “PELLA Philip II 1” includes Le Rider's numbered die combinations 1–3 found in the first section of his study (silver issues of Pella), that include the obverse dies D1–D2 and the reverse dies R1–R3. These numbered dies and die combinations can be found here using the “Subtypes” links found on each type page for Philip II’s coinage, but can be searched and browsed in PELLA. Note, however, that since Le Rider’s die combination numbering begins afresh in each of the six sections in his study (silver issues of Pella; silver issues of Amphipolis; gold issues of Pella; gold issues of Amphipolis, etc.), we distinguish these by adding a numbered section prefix. Thus the first die combination of each section is listed as such: 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, and 6.1. In addition, at the end of section 2 (silver coins of Amphipolis) Le Rider’s study includes coins that are not given die combination numbers, but rather are listed by plate and figure number, e.g., 43, 1.

The Le Rider numbering system has been applied to PELLA in the sequence lerider.philip_ii.[section number].[die combination number]. There are numerous typologies that appear only in the plates and not in the printed text of the monograph. The ID sequence for these is lerider.philip_ii.pl44.14, corresponding to Plate 44, Figure 14. Since the die combination number 60 might appear in several sections within the typology, it is recommended to use the * wildcard character when searching the reference field (from the search page) or the general keyword search. For example, "Le Rider *.60" yields 5 hits for PELLA Philip II types from 5 sections of Le Rider. To search for Plate-Figure numbers, a keyword search for "Le Rider Pl. 43 Fig 1" should suffice. Below is a correspondence list of page numbers to sections to aid in matching to the appropriate Le Rider number when a collection has been cataloged with Le Rider page + die combination number.

  • Section (or Parte) 1: silver issues of Pella
  • Groupe I: pp. 5-21
  • Goupe II: pp. 21-55
  • Goupe III: pp. 56-69

  • Section (or Parte) 2: silver issues of Amphipolis
  • Groupe I: pp. 73-90
  • Groupe II: pp. 90-120
  • Groupe III: pp. 120-124: NB: this Groupe = plate 43, figure 1 through plate 46, figure 36
  • Groupe IV: pp. 125-126: NB: this Groupe = plate 47, figure 1 through plate 48, figure 14

  • Section (or Parte) 3: gold issues of Pella
  • Groupe I: pp. 129-135
  • Groupe II: pp. 135-170
  • Groupe III: pp. 170-198

  • Section (or Parte) 4: gold issues of Amphipolis
  • Groupe I: pp. 201
  • Groupe II: pp. 202-217
  • Groupe III: pp. 218-230

  • Section (or Parte) 5: fractions of gold staters struck at Pella and Amphipolis
  • Groupe I: pp. 233-237
  • Groupe II: pp. 237-247
  • Groupe III: pp. 248-250

  • Section (or Parte) 6: group of fractions of Groupe II gold staters of Amphipolis
  • Pp. 251-252