Request for look-up in Dattari (Savio) illustrations for new Alexandrian coin

[DonnaML]

Does anyone (@Curtis JJ?) have, or have easy access to, the Dattari (Savio) illustrations in either of that book's published editions? If so, I'm very curious as to whether a new Roman Alexandrian tetradrachm of Maximianus Herculius that I just purchased, ex Dattari Collection to the best of my knowledge, is illustrated in Dattari (Savio) as Dattari 5833. (I know the illustrations are just pencil rubbings, but it's usually possible to tell whether a particular coin matches the corresponding illustration.) The reason I suspect the coin might not be illustrated, even though the pedigree to the Dattari Collection is reasonably certain, is that the 1971 Harmer, Rooke auction of approximately 1,300 Dattari Collection coins (including many group lots) at which the coin was purchased was apparently a collection of "duplicates" from the Dattari Collection, put together by Dr. Dattari for Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, sometime prior to the end of his reign in 1909.  Since as far as I know Dattari (Savio) includes only one illustration per Dattari number, one would think that the "duplicates" would not be illustrated. Also, I have no idea when the pencil rubbings were made, and whether that occurred before or after the duplicate collection passed from Dr. Dattari's hands into Abdul Hamid II's possession. (How the duplicate coins got from Abdul Hamid -- who died in 1918 -- to Harmer, Rooke, I also have no idea. I have not been able to find anything indicating that Abdul Hamid II had any kind of well-known coin collection. He was no King Farouk!)

In any event, assuming that my new coin is not illustrated in Dattari (Savio), that means that there are well over 1,000 ex-Dattari Collection Alexandrian coins out there that are probably not traceable to Dattari, unless they happen to be among the very few Dattari coins illustrated in the Harmer, Rooke catalog, or somebody happens, as with this coin, to have memorialized the connection to the 1971 Harmer, Rooke sale in some other way. 

Here's my write-up, with relevant photos:

Maximian (a/k/a Maximianus Herculius), as Augustus, Billon Tetradrachm, AD 288/289 (Maximian Year 4, = Diocletian Year 5), Alexandria, Egypt Mint. Obv. Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust of Maximian right (both wreath ties pointing backwards, Milne type “c”), Α Κ ΜΑ ΟΥΑ ΜΑΞΙΜΙΑΝΟϹ ϹΕΒ / Rev. Alexandria standing left, wearing long chiton, peplos, and close-fitting cap surmounted by three turrets, holding long scepter in left hand and, in outstretched right hand, bust of Sarapis facing towards her, crowned with modius; across fields, date L – Δ (Year 4). 17.77 mm., 6.61 g. RPC [Roman Provincial Coinage] Vol. X Online 76037 [temporary ID number] (see https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/type/76037); Milne 4904 p. 117 (ill. RPC X 76037, specimen 17); BMC 16 Alexandria 2593 (p. 332) (ill. RPC X 76037, specimen 1); Emmett 4093; Dattari (1901 ed.) 5833; K & G 120.33 (ill. p. 352); Curtis 2053 (p. 146) [James W. Curtis, The Tetradrachms of Roman Egypt (1969)];  Kellner, Teil 21, p. 3, ill. p. 5 (Abb. 21) [Wendelin Kellner, Die Münzstätte Alexandria in Ägypten, Teil 21: Diocletian, Jahr 3 – Jahr 7 (orig. pub. https://www.moneytrend.at/die-muenzstaette-alexandria-in-aegypten-teil-21, Jun. 2005, p. 150, ill p. 152)]. Purchased Jan. 18, 2024 from Marc R. Breitsprecher, Hazelhurst, WI; ex Colosseum Coin Exchange (Ira Teitelbaum), Hazlet, NJ, ca. 2005 (part of inventory purchase by MRB) (with Teitelbaum’s coin ticket)*; ex Harmer, Rooke Numismatics, Ltd. auction, New York City, May 27, 1971, including “Coins from the Celebrated Dattari Collection of Roman-Egypt,” Lot 763 (1 of 10 coins in  group lot); ex collection of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, ex Dattari Collection (sub-collection of approximately 1,300 “duplicates of the world famous Dattari collection of ancient Roman Alexandrian coins [p]ut together by Dr. Dattari . . . for Sultan Abdul Hamid II” [Sultan of Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909]; see Harmer, Rooke catalog p. 31).

 

Photo of edge; the coin is unusually thick considering the diameter:

Coin ticket from Colosseum Coin Exchange (Ira Teitelbaum):

Harmer, Rooke May 27, 1971 auction catalog, cover:

Harmer, Rooke May 27, 1971 auction catalog, title page:

Harmer, Rooke May 27, 1971 auction catalog, p. 31, introduction to Dattari Collection sale:

Harmer, Rooke May 27, 1971 auction catalog, p. 45, Lot 763 description:

*Marc Breitsprecher confirmed to me that the ticket is in Ira Teitelbaum’s handwriting, and that not all the tickets accompanying the inventory of approximately 7,000 remaining coins that Marc purchased in the mid-2000s when Teitelbaum retired have the Colosseum logo on them; some of his early tags did not have the reverse logo. Here’s an example Marc sent me of one that did, also with Teitelbaum's handwriting:

 

Apparently, Colosseum was most active in the 1970s through early 2000s, but never had an Internet presence. It is not possible for me to determine whether Colosseum/Teitelbaum was the purchaser of Lot 763 (or any other lots) in the 1971 Harmer, Rooke Dattari Collection auction: none of the old Colosseum catalogs seems to be available online, so it's not as if I can check the ones from the early 1970s to see if there were any ex-Dattari coins for sale.

Any and all thoughts are welcome.

Separately, most of you are probably too young to remember Harmer, Rooke, but they were a prominent New York City coins and antiquities dealer for decades. I remember their store on 57th Street very well; it was down the street from the old Stack's store. I purchased one of the very first ancient artifacts I ever bought at Harmer, Rooke:

 

With a stone Sekhmet:

I believe that my first ancient coin purchase was also at Harmer, Rooke:

Macedon, Alexander III (under  Philip III Arrhidaeus), AR Drachm, Miletos mint, 323-319 BCE. Obv. Head of beardless Herakles to right, wearing lion skin headdress / Rev. Zeus seated left on stool-throne, holding long scepter in left hand, with eagle standing right with closed wings on his right hand; KH monogram (Price Monogram 476) in left field; in right field,  AΛEΞANΔPOY. Price 2121 [Price, M., The Coinage in the Name of Alexander the Great and Philip Arrhidaeus (London, 1991)]; Pella database at http://numismatics.org/pella/id/price.2121?lang=en; Müller 847 [Müller, L., Numismatique d'Alexandre le Grand; Appendice les monnaies de Philippe II et III, et Lysimaque (Copenhagen, 1855-58)]. 16 mm., 4.21 g. Purchased from Harmer Rooke Numismatists, Ltd., New York City, 21 Feb. 1986. 

Edited January 24 by DonnaML

[DonnaML]

PS: I just noticed and should point out -- for the record, if nothing else! -- that the Colosseum/Teitelbaum coin ticket for my coin gives an incorrect Dattari number, stating it as D. 5621 rather than the correct D. 5833, even though the ticket correctly cites Lot 763 of the Harmer, Rooke sale, which does have the correct Dattari number. (D. 5621 is not a Maximian issue but a similar type of Diocletian, also with Alexandria on the reverse.) The coin ticket also cites "C. 2050," which must be a reference to Col. Curtis's 1969 catalog: Curtis 2050 is indeed a coin of Maximian with a reverse depicting Alexandria, but was issued in Maximian's Year 1; this coin is from Maximian's Year 4, and should have been cited as Curtis 2053, as in my own writeup. If the ticket was written in the 1970s, perhaps BMC 16 Alexandria, Milne, and Dattari itself (the 1901 edition), although obviously they had already been published (and Milne had been reprinted in 1971) weren't as readily available in the USA as Curtis. None of the other important catalogs of Roman Alexandrian coinage had yet been published.

[Curtis JJ]

@DonnaML -- Great info about the Harmer-Rooke 1971 Dattari sale! I have the catalog (just for bibliophilic interest, since it doesn't have many photos and only thin descriptions), and various notes about it, but I'm not sure I ever knew that Dattari assembled those coins for Sultan Abdul Hamid II. That's very interesting!

Unfortunately, your coin must be one of the un-illustrated ones. It doesn't seem to appear in the Dattari-Savio rubbings (either in the main 1999 set or the 2007 supplemental ones).

The plate is actually cut off at the bottom of the rubbing as it appears in my photo. That was a complaint specific to the 2007 edition, so may the 1999 didn't clip some of them.

Here's the broader context (bottom center):

The Supplement section didn't have any like this at all. (The Supplement was very thin on later coins, but a lot of Drachms from the Adoptive Emperors.)

Of course, you noted, that doesn't mean your coins wasn't part of Dattari's collection. I actually have a Maximus Tetradrachm that was ex Dattari but not illustrated (it's from the Naville Numismatics parcel):

It seems that the later tetradrachms were especially likely to have escaped illustration. Curtis Clay commented on it in the Gemini XIII catalog of ex-Art Institute (Chicago) Alexandrian coins, many of which were indicated as ex-Dattari but not illustrated. You can also see the pattern by looking at the recent Naville sales and noticing how many of the later Tetradrachms are cited to the Collection but not to any D-S illustration.

There is one other publication, lesser known, Figari-Mosconi's (2017) Duemila Monete della Collezione Dattari. Unfortunately, I've never been able to find a copy (despite looking for a few years), so I'm not sure if it includes any coins absent from the Savio rubbings, or if it only matched up auction photos to coins that already had rubbings.

[David Atherton]

I have the 1999 edition without the cropped pages. As Curtis has already pointed out, your coin is not illustrated. 

For the record, here is the uncropped image of the plate coin.

 

[Curtis JJ]

3 hours ago, DonnaML said:

I have no idea when the pencil rubbings were made, and whether that occurred before or after the duplicate collection passed from Dr. Dattari's hands into Abdul Hamid II's possession.

This is interesting, I had never considered it before. CNG had sold a bunch of coins they traced to the 1971 Harmer Rooke Dattari sale, and they cited each of them with a specific Dattari collection number and "this coin." But I've just checked them all, and not a single one is illustrated in the Dattari-Savio rubbings! (I checked neighboring /duplicate rubbings too.) https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?term=harmer+dattari+1971&company=30

(That means CNG IDed ALL those listings to a specific collection number completely in error.)

I believe they were in the Dattari Collection. But that makes me think that they were all given to the Sultan before the rubbings were made.

(Re: dating the rubbings, from my notes, suggestions about when they were made, and claims about his collection size at different years, are a bit confusing and in conflict... I think it can be worked out from various bio/biblio sources, though, with some effort.)

[DonnaML]

Thanks, @Curtis JJ. Obviously not the same coin, although the obverse looks like Maximian has the same exaggeratedly sharp jaw. In any event, it seems that Dattari kept the nicer example of D. 5833, and picked the one with the irregular flan for the Sultan. Although I'm quite pleased with it myself!

I had never read anything about Dattari having so many duplicates, whether sold by Harmer, Rooke or otherwise, but given what you've found about this one, it wouldn't surprise me if none of them is illustrated in Dattari (Savio). Do we know when those rubbings were originally made? Sometime before Dattari's death in 1923, presumably? The well-known 2018 ANS magazine article about the Dattari Collection by Lucia Carbone  (see https://www.academia.edu/37026327/Giovanni_Dattari_and_His_Fabled_Collection_of_Alexandrian_Coins ), in discussing the publication of the rubbings, doesn't indicate when they were created. Nor does the article say anything about the 1971 Harmer, Rooke auction, or about Dattari having so many duplicates -- not that that should be surprising given the size of his collection -- or about a collection of more than 1,000 such duplicates being put together for Abdul Hamid II.  But given that the latter was deposed as Sultan in 1909, and according to Wikipedia was held in captivity thereafter until he died in 1918, it seems almost certain that if any such collection was actually conveyed to the Sultan, that must have happened well before 1909. Therefore, it's quite possible that those duplicates were no longer in Dattari's possession  when the rubbings were made. 

[Edited to add: I wrote this before I saw your new comment!]

Edited January 24 by DonnaML

[Curtisimo]

Interesting coin with a great provenance @DonnaML. Looks like you are all set with the Dattari-Savio check. Sorry it wasn’t illustrated. That is a volume I would like to add to my library someday.

I would just add that you are correct that the Colosseum Coin Exchange catalogs are nowhere to be found online. In fact, the catalogs are nearly impossible to find at all. The CCE catalogs I have came from @dougsmit’s library and I was extremely happy to have added them to mine.

Here is another CCE tag for comparison.

 

 

[Ed Snible]

Colosseum Coin Exchange did have a web site.  Portions of it can be accessed through the Internet Archive, e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20071223184640/http://www.colocoinex.com/ .  There isn't enough archived to reconstruct the sales.

They had mail bid sales with printed catalogs from the 1980s through the 2000s.  I bought several coins from Ira at shows that had been unsold in those sales.  The sale catalogs are small and the ANS library has most of of them.  (I donated a few to the library).  You are likely to find your coin photographed in one of those sales.

[DonnaML]

15 hours ago, Ed Snible said:

Colosseum Coin Exchange did have a web site.  Portions of it can be accessed through the Internet Archive, e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20071223184640/http://www.colocoinex.com/ .  There isn't enough archived to reconstruct the sales.

They had mail bid sales with printed catalogs from the 1980s through the 2000s.  I bought several coins from Ira at shows that had been unsold in those sales.  The sale catalogs are small and the ANS library has most of of them.  (I donated a few to the library).  You are likely to find your coin photographed in one of those sales.

Thanks, but it's probably not worth the effort for me to track it down, since I already have sufficient documentation (the coin ticket and Marc Breitsprecher's emails) that the coin was purchased from Teitelbaum/Colosseum. And it doesn't really matter that much to me whether Teitelbaum bought the coin himself from the 1971 Harmer, Rooke sale, or purchased it subsequently from someone else.

[DonnaML]

I have spent a lot of time trying to find more information on the "sub-collection" of approximately 1,300 Dattari Collection coins, which Dattari apparently put together for Sultan Abdul Hamid II -- certainly sometime before the latter was deposed in 1909 -- and which Harmer, Rooke dispersed at auction in 1971.  But I found nothing whatsoever about Dattari's connection to the Sultan other than the Harmer, Rooke catalog itself, and nothing at all about how or from whom Harmer, Rooke acquired the coins. As I recall, Harmer, Rooke went out of business more than 20 years ago, and I imagine that its business records have vanished. Nor is it likely that anyone is still around who worked there back in 1971, more than 50 years ago.

It's also pretty clear that nobody knows exactly when Dattari made the 13,000 or so pencil rubbings included in Dattari (Savio), except that it was sometime between 1901 (when he published his original catalog describing about 6,000 coins) and his death in 1923. Presumably, he made the rubbings long enough after 1901 for him to accumulate an additional 7,000+ coins -- something he had apparently already accomplished by 1913, according to the Lucia Carbone article excepted below. Of course it's impossible to know whether he waited until 1913 to start the rubbings, or was making them all along. A lot of people seem to assume that any Dattari Collection coins not illustrated in Dattari (Savio) must have been acquired by Dattari after he made the rubbings. I happen to think it's far more logical to believe -- at least with respect to the 1,300 Harmer, Rooke coins, none of which appears to be illustrated in Dattari (Savio) -- that Dattari had already disposed of them before he made the pencil rubbings. Given that he certainly put the 1,300 coins together before 1909, and almost certainly disposed of them (if he did so at all) before that year, it seems unlikely that he had already accumulated 7,000 additional coins and made pencil rubbings of all of them by 1909. If he had, why wouldn't he have made rubbings of the other 1,300 that he put together for the Sultan? 

For any interest it may have, here's an excerpt from the 2018 Lucia Carbone article about Dattari in the ANS magazine, which I cited above. As you can see, it doesn't mention the Harmer, Rooke coins, although it does show that Dattari made other dispositions of portions of his collections during his lifetime. (Footnotes omitted.)

"The Dattari Collection

Published in 1901, the catalogue of the Dattari Collection
included 6,580 entries for Alexandrian coins and
was distinguished by a virtual lack of duplication.21 This
catalogue, however, represented only a fraction of his
collection, since in 1903, two years after the publication
of the catalogue, Dattari wrote that it included 6,835
Alexandrian coins, 91 Archaic Greek coins, 230 coins
of Alexander the Great, 19,320 Roman coins, and 630
leaden and glass objects.22 The number of Alexandrian
coins was at least doubled before his death in 1923,
since Dattari stated that his collection included over
13,000 specimens.23

Allegedly lacking funds for the publication of a catalogue
of the Egyptian coins from the Nomes included
in his collection, Dattari himself sold part of it during
his life, first in 1909 to the Washington-based antiquarian
Charles Lang Freer, then in 1912 in Paris through
the mediation of the art dealer Dikran Kelekian24 (figs.
19–22). The lot sold in the US, including 1,388 glass
pieces, 22 vases from the XVIII and XIX dynasties, and
four Greek vases, is now part of the collection of the
Smithsonian Institute.25 The Paris lot comprised 622

Egyptian, Greek, and Roman pieces of great interest,
but was almost immediately dispersed on the market.26
It is also known that Giovanni Dattari donated almost
2,000 coins from his collection to the Museo Nazionale
Romano in Rome, probably in the hope of being
granted the honorific title of “Cavaliere del Regno
d’Italia” (Knight of the Italian Kingdom).27
In 1923, after the death of Giovanni, the collection
passed in the hands of Eudosia Zifadà, his widow, and
his children Maria and Marco Aurelio.28 As it is known
from the official correspondence in the years 1950–1952
between Maria Dattari and the Italian Ministry of
Culture, the daughter of the late collector intended to
donate her father’s entire collection, consisting at this
point of more than 13,000 Alexandrian coins, to the
Italian State. The donation would have also included
the unpublished manuscript of the catalogue for the
second part of the Dattari Collection, the one acquired
after the publication of the first catalogue in 1901.29
However, in 1953 the deteriorating political situation
in Egypt (and possibly the maddening bureaucracy of
the Italian Ministry) lead Maria to abandon her original
idea, depriving the Italian State of a world-class
collection (fig. 23).30

After 1952, since all Egyptian antiquities were nationalized
and could not be legally exported, Maria Dattari
decided to smuggle them to Europe.31 The collection
was then handed over to C. Michalitzes, possibly her
family physician, who was supposed to entrust them to
the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

 

Unfortunately, C. Michalitzes put the coins in a safe, instead
of handing them to the Museum.32 In 1972, Giorgos, C.
Michalitzes’ son, sold 8,000 coins from the Dattari Collection,
allegedly because of his dire financial situation A trial followed.

G. Michalitzes was sentenced to 10 months for the illegal

subtraction and subsequent sale

of the coins belonging to Maria Dattari and the remainder
of the collection (ca. 5,000 coins) was returned to
Maria Dattari, thanks to Mando Caramessini-Oeconomides,
then Director of the Numismatic Museum
of Athens (fig. 24).33 The coins sold by G. Michailitzes
were never retrieved. After this date and until Maria’s
death in 1981, the coins returned to Dattari’s heir were
presumably dispersed on the market and Giovanni Dattari’s
manuscript, containing an updated inventory of
the collection, was never published. The famed Dattari
collection, considered by far the best collection of Alexandrian
coins ever assembled, met an inglorious end.
All the coins and Dattari’s unpublished manuscript
seem to have vanished into thin air.

The story of the retrieval of the lost manuscript starts
off as a scholarly fairy tale. In the words of Adriano
Savio, Professor of Ancient Numismatics at the University
of Milan, who curated the new edition, “[i]n 1998,
the lost inventory of the Dattari Collection emerged
from the dust of a forgotten library.”34 The documents

were contained in a box (cassa in the Italian original),
orderly divided in six different folders, possibly
by Maria Dattari.35 Out of these folders emerged the
inventory of the reminder of the Dattari Collection,
from no. 6,581 (the last specimen included in the
catalogue of 1901) up to no. 10,845, a coin of Domitius
Domitianus.36 This was the inventory referred to
by Giovanni Dattari already in 1909 in his letters to
the US antiquarian Charles Lang Freer and to J. G.
Milne.37 This inventory represent the core of the reviewed
edition of the catalogue of the Dattari Collection,
published by A. Savio in 1999. This new edition
added 323 plates and 7,000 coins to the original catalogue
of 1901.38

Other treasures were buried in the “box from the dusty
and forgotten library,” among which was the Catalogue
of the Coinage from the Egyptian Nomes, still unpublished.
39 Another chapter was added to the quest for
the lost Dattari documents when the supplement to the
inventory of the collection was found in a stationery
shop in Cairo.40 This supplement consisted of 326 pages
and 701 pencil rubbings, which bring the total number
of the specimens included in the Dattari Collection to

more than 13,200 specimens. These figures are perfectly
in line with the ones given by Dattari himself in 1913,
when he stated that his Alexandrian collection included
over 13,000 coins.41"

 

Obviously, the 1,300 coins in the Harmer, Rooke sale in 1971 couldn't possibly have come from the 8,000 coins that Giorgos Michalitzes sold illegally in 1972, even if (unlikely as that is) Harmer, Rooke completely fabricated the whole "Sultan" story. In any event, either Dr. Carbone was not familiar with the Harmer, Rooke sale or simply didn't address it.

 

As for Dattari's sales of portions of his collection in 1909 in Washington, D.C. and 1912 in Paris, as far as I've been able to tell those sales did not include any ancient coins. See the attached pdf catalog of the 1912 sale, which I found on Gallica. It's all antiquities. Dattari's collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts (beginning at p. 35 of the catalog), sold together with the collection of Greek antiquities of Jean P. Lambros of Athens, was almost as astounding as his coin collection! (See Plates XXIV to the end, beginning at p. 129 of the pdf. There's even a Fayyum mummy portrait, Lot 613, illustrated in Plate LXI, although the lot description simply calls it a painting on wood.)

 

Finally, here's one more brief article about the Dattari Collection and Dattari (Savio) that I came across, by William Metcalf, published in the Revue Suisse de Numismatique Vol. 81 (2002) (see https://www.e-periodica.ch/digbib/view?pid=snr-003%3A2002%3A81#5 )  :

 

 

Antiquités_égyptiennes_grecques_et_romaines_[...]_bd6t5382340c.pdf

Edited January 25 by DonnaML

[Curtis JJ]

Great research as always Donna. I will surely be referring back to this. I think you are right that many of those coins left the collection long before the rubbings. (Maybe even before the 1901 catalog?)

(It's also clear that many rubbings were lost. The supplement group of 700 published in 2007 was found by chance in a bookstore or something & is clearly neither a census nor random sample, showing many coins of certain reigns, none for others. So some coins may have once been illustrated but we just don't know.)

You may already be aware -- there is one more major reference to the life of Dattari:

Adriano Savio's book-length bio, Un Numismatico Italiano al Cairo.

Not speaking/reading Italian, I've never tried to get through it all. (Trying to learn German for numismatic purposes is enough for now!) But I've scanned for specific bits of information. (I have a PDF but fear I may have gotten a pirated copy from one of those sketchy sites without realizing it.)

Searching my PDF, I see no use of the words Abdul or Hamid or Ottomano or Harmer or Rooke. The only uses of "sultano" are for Sultano Fouad [sic?] (I think Dattari was cataloging his scarabs but never finished).

He addresses the timing of Dattari's work, including his many articles and unpublished manuscripts. There is a plate of rubbings shown (from the 2007 Dattari-Savio Supplement), but I don't see it obviously dated.

Savio does seem to give rough dates for various inventories of the collection. Looks like Dattari wrote to Milne 2 May 1911 that he had cataloged up to No. 12221. (Fewer than total, rubbings must be later?)

And in 1916 "intenzionato a pubblicare un supplemento al catalogo del 1901 (di cui si dirà succivamente)" [intended to publish the followup to his 1901 book, TBD below], but I haven't found any more concrete dates in Savio's later discussion. Then again, I don't know Italian, so not sure!

(If any living person knows these things, I would think it's Adriano Savio himself.)

Edited January 25 by Curtis JJ

[DonnaML]

Thanks, @Curtis JJ. No, I wasn't familiar with Savio's biography of Dattari. I don't think I'll pursue it, given that I'm not a reader of Italian. 

Despite referring to the possibility, I strongly doubt that Harmer, Rooke -- a highly reputable dealer in coins and antiquities, although it began as a stamp dealer back in 1903 in London, with a NYC presence since 1939, and didn't branch out into numismatics until the late 1960s -- invented the Dattari-Sultan story. (Even if a dealer were inclined to invent provenance, the story seems to me to be way too specific to be a complete fabrication. As opposed to the standard "from a European collection" stories!) And it makes logical sense that Dattari may have wished to put together a collection for the Sultan, given that until the First World War, even though Egypt was a British protectorate, it was still technically and legally part of the Ottoman Empire. 

It occurs to me that there is someone still around (I believe) who may be worth asking if they remember anything about the 1971 Harmer, Rooke auction of Dattari Collection duplicates. Back in 1971, Harmer, Rooke was run by Leo Dardarian and Joseph H. Rose. At the time of the Dattari auction in May 1971, it had just moved to its new headquarters at 3 East 57th St., where I believe it remained until 1993. See this advertisement in a Jan. 1971 publication:

Rose and Dardarian became the owners of Harmer, Rooke in 1979; see https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/550732?page=21 :

"The New York coin and antiquities firm of Harmer Rooke Numismatists Ltd has been acquired by a group of its employees headed by Joseph H. Rose and Leo M. Dardarian who are the majority stock holders. Minority stockholders are Howard S. Rose, Charles G. Moore, Nancy L. McGlashan, and Michael J. Toledo. Rose, who will continue to serve as president of the firm, is a member of the Professional Numismatists Guild . . . ."

I know that Leo Dardarian is deceased, and Joseph H. Rose died in 2003. See https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/PersonDetail/1662 :

"Joseph H. Rose
Biography
Born in Washington Heights, New York. Attended City College of New York, Columbia University, Washington and Jefferson College and the University of Hawaii. Served during WW II in the Air Corps in the Pacific. He was a correspondent for Stars and Stripes. Married to Charlotte with a son and daughter.

He began selling coins in 1946. Employed with William Holzman and Company 1946 to 1964. Employed by Manfra Tordella and Brookes until 1969. In 1969 he joined Harmer Rooke. He became company president in 1972. In 1979 he bought a majority interest in the firm. With Howard Hazelcorn, he rewrote the Taxay encyclopedia for a second edition in 1975. His collection of large cents was sold at auction by Harmer Rooke March 15, 1990.

bio: CAT Harmer Rooke

profile: CW 4/10/85

 obit: CW 2/24/2003

Source credit: Pete Smith, American Numismatic Biographies

Bio Snapshot

Date of Birth: 1922
Place of Birth: Washington Heights, New York
Date of Death: 2003 - Jan - 12"

However, Joseph's son Howard Rose, who also worked at Harmer, Rooke for many years beginning in 1971 -- albeit in the antiquities department; note that his signature appears on my 1982 COA reproduced above, as "H. Rose" -- is still alive, and, as far as I know, is presently the proprietor of the Arte Primitivo gallery at 3 East 65th Street in New York City. See https://www.arteprimitivo.com/scripts/aboutus.asp :

"Arte Primitivo, located at 3 East 65th Street in NYC, is a gallery specializing in Pre-Columbian Art, Classical and Egyptian Antiquities, Asian Antiquities and Antiques, Ethnographic Art, Ancient Numismatics, and Books . The gallery conducts absentee auctions approximately 3 times a year, plus special exhibitions, retail, and private sales.

The owner, Howard S. Rose, started his career in the Antiquities business in 1971. Before taking over the Arte Primitivo gallery, Rose was the director of Harmer Rooke Galleries on 57th Street, for nearly 25 years, and more recently director of Greg Manning Galleries. Rose has authored over 125 auction catalogues, is a licensed and bonded New York auctioneer, is a full member of both the NADAOPA (National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art) and ATADA (Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association) and has performed hundreds of appraisals as well as advising the IRS and the NYC DEA on property evaluations.

Gallery director, Claudine Colmenar was assistant director of Greg Manning Galleries and worked closely with Rose previously.

The Arte Primitivo Gallery of Pre-Columbian Art and Books was originally founded in 1971 by William and Mildred Kaplan, dedicated to the needs of archaeologists, scholars, collectors, and students. The name and location of the gallery in midtown Manhattan were acquired by Rose, who renovated the premises and re-opened the gallery in early September 1996."

(I remember passing that gallery often on my way home -- I grew up nearby -- when I was in high school.)

See also the article profiling Howard Rose beginning at p. 8 of the Summer 2014 issue of the ATADA [Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association] News , available at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56e89d039f7266c5a6811f78/t/580f905fd1758ebb6aae3332/1477415011318/cATADA3-14web-new.pdf . A relevant excerpt:

"Howard started working for his father at Harmer Rooke in 1971, while a freshman in college. 'People who collected coins often had other areas  of interest also, and Dad had some knowledge of antiquities, and most ancient cultures, being an historian and an ancient
coin expert. We were offered every kind of collectible you can imagine. I found pre-Columbian and Egyptian particularly interesting, and took a liking to the art and artifacts I saw from those areas that we were selling at Harmer Rooke.' Years later, Howard says that
'Harmer Rooke’s exhibition and sale of the Peter G. Wray Collection in 1984 put us on the map.' Wray, a businessman and rancher, owned an 'amazing' collection of pre-Columbian art. 'We were invited to his ranch in Scottsdale. Where he had better objects in his second
guesthouse than we had at our gallery.' The first two Wray sales — described in a 1984
New York Times review as 'a bounty of selections in stone, ceramic and metal” from one
of “the nation’s finest private collections' — were held at the same time at Andre 
Emmerich’s gallery on 57th Street and Klaus Perls Gallery on Madison Avenue. After
those two shows, Harmer Rooke sold a great deal of Wray material.
Harmer Rooke was ultimately bought by Greg Manning Auctions, in 1993, who moved
the company to New Jersey in 1995. Although Howard now lives in New Jersey, he says that 'even people who live in New Jersey don’t want to buy their art in New Jersey.' Visitors to the NJ gallery were rare and few, and Howard was unhappy with the large corporate
structure of the Manning organization. By this time Howard had acquired both 
knowledge and maturity, and  wanted to go out on his own." [Followed by discussion of history of Arte Primitivo, Rose's acquisition of it, etc.]

Is it likely that Howard Rose would remember anything about a Harmer, Rooke auction that took place either shortly before or shortly after he began working there, when he was a freshman in college, given that ancient coins weren't his main interest anyway? Probably not! And although I suppose it's remotely possible that he has some of his father's personal records, Harmer Rooke's corporate records presumably passed to Greg Manning Auctions in 1993, and I doubt they would have kept anything from more than 20 years before the acquisition. Still, it might be worth my writing to Howard Rose to ask, even though he certainly wouldn't remember me. 

There's also the other individual I got in touch with at your suggestion a while back on a question related to Roman Alexandrian coinage. Do you think he might know anything about the 1971 Harmer, Rooke sale?

Edited January 25 by DonnaML

[Curtis JJ]

19 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

I strongly doubt that Harmer, Rooke [...] invented the Dattari-Sultan story.

I agree. This is a point that remains relevant for collection sales today. Unlike "Euro. Coll. before 2005," asserting a specific collection history means people can challenge it -- forever. Even if dead, the family or colleagues or biographers/provenance researchers could be in a position to challenge or verify. At the time, being a public NY auction, people could've expected to see documents (written inventories, etc.), whose absence would raise suspicion. Such a fraud isn't inconceivable, but my usual feeling is that the more specific the details, the harder (and riskier) it would be to pull off -- at least without raising suspicion.

19 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

Still, it might be worth my writing to Howard Rose to ask, even though he certainly wouldn't remember me. 

There's also the other individual I got in touch with at your suggestion a while back on a question related to Roman Alexandrian coinage. Do you think he might know anything about the 1971 Harmer, Rooke sale?

Even if they don't happen to recall these details, it could be very interesting to hear what they think is worth remembering. The oral history of the trade (which can even become the history of science for a field in which the "data" itself is often dispersed in commerce). That's putting it grandly, but I happen to be fascinated by that stuff!

[Broucheion]

Hi @DonnaML & @Curtis JJ,

Yet another piece of the Dattari puzzle is discussed in the volume "Passionate Curiosities: Tales of Collectors & Collections from the Kelsey Museum" by Lauren E. Talalay & Margaret Cool Root (Kelsey Museum Publication 13 [2015]).  It discusses the Kelsey's collections and is available here. Here is an extended quote with the only illustrated Dattari coin, but I could not find that coin in the 2007 Dattari-Savio catalog.

The Dattari Collection
Nearly twenty years after the accumulated Richards gifts were officially accepted by the
University, Ann Arbor received another numismatic windfall. On July 20, 1909, Francis
Kelsey had a cablegram from his friend Freer (chapter three), who was in Egypt at the
time. The message asked if Kelsey would be willing to accept a gift of several thousand
coins from a gentleman in Cairo. This gentleman was Giovanni Dattari, a well-known
collector and numismatist who was a long-time resident of Cairo — first employed at
the offices of the Thomas Cook & Son’s travel agency and later serving as a provisioner
to the colonial British Army.

Professor Kelsey was most enthusiastic about the potential offer. In due course, the
University formally accepted Dattari’s collection. The gold, silver, and bronze coins date
mainly from the founding of Alexandria, Egypt, in 332 BCE to the middle of the 4th
century CE. That Dattari chose to donate this valuable corpus to the University of Michigan
is noteworthy (fig. 7.25a–b). Unlike many of the other scenarios of acquisition in
these early years, Dattari had no connection to the state of Michigan, to its University, or
to Professor Kelsey personally. Correspondence between Freer and Dattari suggests that,
although the latter felt compelled to sell a good deal of his antiquities for financial reasons,
he had an overriding interest in donating the coins specifically to a university that
would use them in teaching and research. Ten days after Freer sent the cable to Kelsey
urging him to consider Dattari’s gift offer, Freer himself purchased 1,388 glass objects
from the Italian collector for 2,500 pounds sterling. Could the extraordinarily wealthy
(and civic-minded) Mr. Freer have paid this princely sum to Dattari for the glass artifacts
in order to make more palatable Dattari’s donation of his coins to Michigan?

 

- Broucheion

[Edited after posting: P.S., it looks like there are 3099 Dattari coins (?!?) that are searchable but not illustrated via the link below]

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/k/kelsey?q1=Dattari, Giannino;rgn1=kelsey_lot;select1=phrase;size=50;sort=kelsey_dimhgt;type=boolean;view=reslist;start=2751

 

 

 

Edited January 25 by Broucheion

[Curtis JJ]

Thanks for those details @Broucheion -- his coins are also in several other museums. Below is an excerpt from my notes with some links to the coins in online Museum cabinets.

I realize now that I left out another major one -- the Royal Belgian Library's Numismatic Cabinet. (I forget what it's called, KBR for the Dutch acronym.) They received 5,200 of his Late Roman Bronzes, mainly from the Alexandria mint. (Many others dispersed recently by Jesus Vico and a parcel from CNG that I think they got from Vico.)

Institutions where his coins ended up: 

Among them: Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto (though provenance not noted online); University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; the British Museum, London; American Numismatic Society, New York (though only dozens explicitly provenanced as such in Mantis); Art Institute of Chicago (especially those gifted by R. Grover, only some of which were deaccessioned and sold at Gemini XIII in 2017).

 EDIT: Here is Fran Stroobants' article on "Alexandrian nummi in the collection of the Coin Cabinet of the Royal Library of Belgium"

Incidentally, Art Institute of Chicago used to have hundreds more, but acquired just because there were so many in another donation (R.L. Grover, many now deaccessioned). Here's one of mine that was Dattari --> Grover --> Art Institute of Chicago --> Deaccessioned --> Gemini --> Zumbly --> me

Edited January 25 by Curtis JJ

[DonnaML]

On 1/25/2024 at 2:45 PM, DonnaML said:

Despite referring to the possibility, I strongly doubt that Harmer, Rooke -- a highly reputable dealer in coins and antiquities, although it began as a stamp dealer back in 1903 in London, with a NYC presence since 1939, and didn't branch out into numismatics until the late 1960s -- invented the Dattari-Sultan story. (Even if a dealer were inclined to invent provenance, the story seems to me to be way too specific to be a complete fabrication. As opposed to the standard "from a European collection" stories!) And it makes logical sense that Dattari may have wished to put together a collection for the Sultan, given that until the First World War, even though Egypt was a British protectorate, it was still technically and legally part of the Ottoman Empire. 

. . . .

However, Joseph's son Howard Rose, who also worked at Harmer, Rooke for many years beginning in 1971 -- albeit in the antiquities department; note that his signature appears on my 1982 COA reproduced above, as "H. Rose" -- is still alive, and, as far as I know, is presently the proprietor of the Arte Primitivo gallery at 3 East 65th Street in New York City. See https://www.arteprimitivo.com/scripts/aboutus.asp :

...

Is it likely that Howard Rose would remember anything about a Harmer, Rooke auction that took place either shortly before or shortly after he began working there, when he was a freshman in college, given that ancient coins weren't his main interest anyway? Probably not! And although I suppose it's remotely possible that he has some of his father's personal records, Harmer Rooke's corporate records presumably passed to Greg Manning Auctions in 1993, and I doubt they would have kept anything from more than 20 years before the acquisition. Still, it might be worth my writing to Howard Rose to ask, even though he certainly wouldn't remember me. 

There's also the other individual I got in touch with at your suggestion a while back on a question related to Roman Alexandrian coinage. Do you think he might know anything about the 1971 Harmer, Rooke sale?

An update. I wrote to both Howard Rose and the other individual mentioned above to ask if they knew anything about the Harmer, Rooke 1971 auction of approximately 1,300 Dattari Collection coins (including many group lots), apparently a collection of "duplicates" from the Dattari Collection, allegedly put together by Dr. Dattari for Sultan Abdul Hamid II (the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire), sometime prior to the end of his reign in 1909. 

I heard nothing from Howard Rose, so I will assume that he remembers nothing and/or has no interest in discussing the subject.

However, proving @Curtis JJ's point that one never knows what useful information one may find by asking people what they remember, I did hear back from the other person. I don't feel free to identify him, but he is a well-known expert on Roman Alexandrian coins and an important writer on the subject. Among other things, he said:

"I do have an original Harmer, Rooke auction catalog. I think it was a bunch of junk. I think it is a collection of remains from the various lots Dattari purchased over the years. The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto obtained a huge collection of coins from Milne who obtained them directly from Dattari. I forget the total number of coins but I would guess 40,000? They were also remains of lots. . . . Dattari also donated coins to MILAN. I do not think any were ever in his original or additional collection. . . . I have a hard time believing they were meant for a Sultan."

In other words, this person believes that Harmer, Rooke did fabricate the "Sultan story" as a pedigree for the coins sold in the 1971 auction. After all, it isn't as if Abdul Hamid II was still around in 1971 to contradict the story! That would explain my inability to find any other reference to the story, or even to the Sultan having been a coin collector. I think that what my correspondent is suggesting is that while the coins in the Harmer, Rooke auction -- as well as the Dattari coins that the ROM obtained from Dattari via Milne -- did, in fact, originate with Dr. Dattari, they were "remains" from the many lots he purchased, and were probably not part of what Dattari considered part of his actual "collection" to be included in his original or his planned supplemental catalog (i.e., the 13,000 coins reflected in the pencil rubbings published by Savio).

I think "junk" is a bit harsh as used to describe a good number of the 1,300 coins offered by Harmer, Rooke in 1971, including my own Maximianus Herculius tetradrachm which was the original subject of my post. However, the described condition of some of the group lots offered in the auction is so low that it's indeed difficult to believe that they would have been "put together" for the Sultan, as Harmer, Rooke stated. 

See, for example, this series of Claudius group lots, all described as ranging in condition from F - VG:

And this series of Hadrian group lots ranging from F or G - VG:

Now, I realize that what was considered Fair or Good in 1971 would probably be described by some dealers today as Fine or Very Fine. But the idea that such lots would have been considered "fit for a Sultan" in the first decade of the 20th century does seem a bit hard to believe. 

So perhaps a distinction needs to be made between coins being "ex Dattari" and "ex Dattari Collection"!

Edited February 9 by DonnaML