Friday Focus - Masterpiece or Fake? Dr Hunter’s Naxos coin
Join Dr Tim Wright in this online talk, as he explores the history of William Hunter's Naxos coin, held in The Hunterian collections
Date: Friday 11 July 2025
Time: 13:00 - 13:30
Venue: Online
Category: Hunterian
Speaker: Dr Tim Wright
The silver tetradrachm from the Greek city of Naxos in Sicily of c. 460 BCE is considered one of the numismatic masterpieces of the ancient world. Its innovative design and exquisite execution at the hand of the Aetna Master engraver marked the transition from archaic to classical styles. Struck from a single die-pair, only seventy-eight surviving examples are known, almost half of which are in museum collections.
The Hunterian is the proud owner of two examples, with the first bequeathed by its benefactor and the other by Thomas Coates. At least two distinguished numismatists in 1899 and 1944 suspected that Dr Hunter’s Naxos coin is a forgery, and it has been assumed to be such ever since.
Tim Wright explores why the Naxos coin is considered a masterpiece through the lenses of art, history, provenance, economics and crime. He then revisits the evidence of whether the Hunter example is a fake or genuine example of this stunning coin.
About the Speaker
Dr Tim Wright is a semi-retired businessman with a passion for ancient coins, especially those of Greek Sicily and pre-Roman Britain. He is fascinated by artistic and historic aspects of coins, and what they tell us as about the peoples and times that produced them.
Dr Wright has also sought to explore the provenance of coins, together with the public and private collections that hold them. For him, numismatics (the collection and study of coins) must also address their status as objects of cultural property, to be protected from the excesses of the commercial marketplace.
Dr Wright has written and spoken widely on the subject, always seeking to make what can be a technical or dry subject accessible to a broader audience. In 2023, he published his first book, British Celtic Coins: Art or Imitation? (Spink) as an introduction to the coins of pre-Roman Britain, which was also featured in several articles, including for the American Numismatic Society (ANS). His second book, Travels with the Naxos Masterpiece, is an introduction to Greek numismatics through the ‘lives’, formed the basis of a lecture to the Royal Numismatic Society (RNS) in January and will be published by Spink in June 2025.
Friday Focus is an online talks series hosted by The Hunterian, University of Glasgow. Each session features a different speaker, sharing a deeper insight into our exhibitions and collections, research and work going on behind the scenes at The Hunterian.
The talks take place at 1pm over Zoom, and are 25 minutes long with time for questions afterwards. Recordings of the sessions will be made available on our YouTube channel.
Find out more about upcoming Friday Focus talks.