The historical coins exhibited in Tunceli Museum, one of Turkey's favorite museums, take its visitors on a journey into the past.
The museum consists of 4 blocks and 5,800 square meters (6,936 square yards) of indoor space in eastern Tunceli province, which is of great importance in terms of tourism with its unspoiled nature and cultural riches. In addition to the sections featuring written and visual displays, it also welcomes visitors with sections including "Alevism," "archaeology," "library" and "ethnography." While nearly 2,000 artifacts are exhibited in the showcases, about 700 artifacts are kept under protection in warehouses in the museum.
Among the most striking works in the museum are the coin collections belonging to the Greek, Roman, Umayyad, Abbasid, Artuqid, Aq Qoyunlu, Rum Seljuk Sultanate and Ottoman periods. Approximately 170 coins, which were collected by donations, purchases or excavations and taken under protection in the museum, present important archaeological findings with the figures engraved on them.
The coins, which are a source of material culture in terms of the history of Tunceli, give clues about the periods in which they were made through the state coat of arms, the name of the ruler who minted them, their date of issue and the city where they were minted.
At the same time, figures to which Anatolian civilizations attribute symbolic value based on their cultures, mythologies, geography and the events they have experienced stand out on the coins.
Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Tunceli Museum Director Kenan Öncel said that the museum houses artifacts that are thousand of years old. Stating that the coins exhibited in the museum are among important works, Öncel said, "We have a wide variety of coin exhibitions from the Greek period to the Roman, Byzantine, Sassanid, Anatolian Beyliks, Abbasis, Umayyad, Ilkhanate and Ottoman periods in our museum. With the invention of money and the discovery of money by the Lydians, money was widely used in Anatolia. Coins of a civilization in the Aegean region can be found in Tunceli today as coins were used as trade materials."