Harold Mattingly

This article is about a British numismatist; for his son, see Harold B. Mattingly .

Harold Mattingly (born December 24, 1884 in Sudbury , † January 26, 1964 in Chesham ) was a British numismatist . He was regarded as one of the most outstanding representatives of his field in the 20th century, especially with regard to Roman coinage.

Life

Harold Mattingly studied at Gonville and Caius College at the University of Cambridge from 1903 to 1907 . He completed his studies with a master's degree and in 1907 went to the Berlin University as a Craven University scholarship holder and then to the University of Freiburg , where he studied with Eduard Meyer and Ernst Fabricius until 1909 . In 1909/10 he was a fellow of his college in Cambridge. Although he was awarded the Thirlwall Prize , Mattingly saw no future in Cambridge. In 1910 he became Assistant Keeper at the British Museum's Department of Printed Books . In 1912 he moved to the Department of Coins and Medals , where he was to remain until he left active service in 1948 and found his calling. He first worked on the museum's Roman coins . The first volume was published in 1923, followed by five more volumes by 1962, which were created under Mattingly's direction. In addition, he participated intensively in the systematic processing of Roman coins in the multi-volume compilation The Roman Imperial Coinage . With Edward A. Sydenham and Carol VH Sutherland, he edited and published six of the volumes, and he edited three more. This work was only interrupted from 1914 to 1918 by the First World War , where he worked in the Postal Censorship Bureau . 1954/55 Mattingly was visiting professor at the University of Otago .

Mattingly has received numerous awards for his work and has been given high and honorable offices. From 1942 to 1948 he was President of the Royal Numismatic Society , of which he had been a member since 1912, and also edited the Numismatic Cronicle from 1936 to 1952 . He has received the two most important international numismatic awards, the Archer M. Huntington Medal in 1938 and the Royal Numismatic Society's medal in 1941 . In 1946 he became a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1960 Commander of the Order of the British Empire . Mattingly received an honorary doctorate from the University of Otago in New Zealand . As a translator he translated the works Agricola and Germania of Tacitus into English . He also dealt with Roman history , on which he published mainly in the early part of his career.

His son was the ancient historian and numismatist Harold B. Mattingly .

Fonts

• Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum. 6 volumes. British Museum, London 1923–1962.
• with Edward A. Sydenham : The Roman Imperial Coinage . 10 volumes. Spink, London 1923-1994.
• Roman Coins from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire. Methuen & Co., London 1928, (2nd edition, revised and reset. Ibid 1960).
• with Edward SG Robinson: The Date of the Roman Denarius and Other Landmarks in Early Roman Coinage. In: Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 18, 1933, ISSN  0068-1202 , pp. 211-268, (special reprint: Milford, London 1933).
• Some New Studies of the Roman Republican Coinage. In: Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 39, 1953, pp. 239-285.

literature

• Dr. Harold Mattingly. Distinguished Numismatist. In: The Times . February 1, 1964, p. 10.
• Stefan Krmnicek: Mattingly, Harold. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Sp. 797 f.

Web links

• Entry in the Dictionary of Art Historians (English)

Remarks

1. ^ Harold Mattingly: Roman Coins from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Western Empire. 2nd edition, revised and reset. Methuen & Co., London 1960, p. 22, ( excerpt online from Google Books ).