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# The Jungfleisch Archive

Thomas Faucher

► To cite this version:

Thomas Faucher. The Jungfleisch Archive. Compte Rendu du Comité international de Numismatique, 2021, 67, pp.72-77. hal-03910787

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Submitted on 3 Apr 2023

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CONSEJO INTERNACIONAL DE NUMISMÁTICA
INTERNATIONAL NUMISMATIC COUNCIL
CONSEIL INTERNATIONAL DE NUMISMATIQUE
INTERNATIONALER NUMISMATISCHER RAT
CONSIGLIO INTERNAZIONALE DI NUMISMATICA

incin
International
Numismatic
Council

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>

COMPTE RENDU 67/2020

PUBLIÉ PAR LE SECRÉTARIAT DU CONSEIL

ISSN : 1562-6377
# TABLE OF CONTENTS - SOMMAIRE

## NUMISMATIC COLLECTIONS

*The KIKPE numismatic collection (Athens) in a two decades retrospective, by Yannis STOYAS* 1

*Scharfrichterpfennige, Portugaleser und Taler. Das Münzkabinett des Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, by Ralf WIECHMANN* 15

*Die numismatische Sammlungen des Landes Oberösterreich, by Bernhard PROKISCH* 46

*The John Max Wulfing Collection of Ancient Coins and Related Objects at Washington University in Saint Louis, by William BUBELIS* 62

## VARIA

*Short report about the INC-CIN website, by Cecilia VON HEIJNE* 69

*The Jungfleisch Archive, by Thomas FAUCHER* 72

## MEETING OF THE INC

*Meeting by videoconference of the Committee (Brussels, April 27, 2020)* 78

## REPORTS

1. Projects under the patronage of the INC

c) Lexicon Iconographicum Numismaticae (LIN), by Maria CALTABIANO

e) Sylloge Nummorum Parthicorum (SNP), by Vesta CURTIS & Fabrizio SINISI

2. Reports from affiliated bodies

b) Oriental Numismatic Society (ONS), by Helen WANG

d) International Committee for Money and Banking Museums (ICOMON), by Ute WARTENBERG

## ACCOUNTS OF THE INC* 90

## AUDITOR'S REPORT* 92

## COMPOSITION OF THE COMMITTEE* 93

## MEMBERS

*Institutional members* 95

*Honorary members* 110
THE JUNGFLEISCH ARCHIVE

Marcel Jungfleisch bequeathed part of his archive to the *Institut français d'ar-
chéologie orientale* in Cairo (Ifao)<fnref n="1" />. This glimpse of his works represents a
relentless effort that occupied him for more than ten years: his ‘Numis-
matic obituaries elements’. Before digging deeper in this archive and the
online project associated with its publication, a presentation of who Marcel
Jungfleisch was, seems necessary, because if he is well known for his writ-
ings, especially those specialized in Islamic coinage, his life and his great
work lie into the shadow.

Marcel Clément Léon Jungfleisch remains an author frequently cited by
specialists in oriental coinages, but his interests ranged more widely from
the monetary history of Egypt and the Muslim countries in all its forms, to
agricultural problems, philately and even Chinese antiquities. His numis-
matic work on the Islamic period is still widely used, and his article on coin
moulds, following the discovery of several thousand coin moulds from Qasr
Qarun in the Fayum, is still a reference.

Marcel Jungfleisch was not a professional numismatist; indeed, he liked to
call himself a *praticien de la monnaie*<fnref n="2" />. He worked primarily as an agricultural
engineer. But his life is much less known than his work, and only the obi-
tuary written by Jacques Schwartz in the *Revue Numismatique* in 1958, the
same year Marcel Jungfleisch died, offers some information on the life of
this renown numismatist<fnref n="3" />.

Marcel Jungfleisch was born in 1879 in Paris. His family name is especially
known thanks to his uncle, the famous chemist Emile Jungfleisch, member
of the Academy of Sciences. J. Schwartz indicates that Jungfleisch left France
for Egypt as early as 1902.

A military document confirms that he left Paris to go to Egypt on 22 May
1902. He first lived in Alexandria before moving to Cairo where he stayed
for ten years. After returning to Europe for a few months in 1912, he then

<footnote>* Centre d'Études Alexandrines (USR 3134 CNRS); @ : thomas.faucher@cea.com.eg</footnote>

<footnote n="1">¹ He surely left a series of archive also in the Institut français d’Égypte, being there a member for more than three decades, but most of the documents there burned during the uprising in 2011. He also left some archive in the BnF which consist of two documents filled up with Egyptian newspaper pages related to the numismatics (I owe this information to Julien Olivier).</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Jungfleisch 1948.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ Schwartz 1958.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Registre matricule du recrutement. Matricule 322, 3e bureau, classe 1899 : http://archives.paris.fr/s/17/etats-signaletiques-et-des-services-militaires/1259602/jung-fleisch/?&debut=0</footnote>
went to Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, where he worked in the sugar factories for more than ten years. Following his appointment to the Crédit Foncier Égyptien, he returned to Cairo in 1927 where he lived until his death in 1958.

Back to Cairo, he was able to devote himself more intensively to his research activities. He was a member of the Institute of Egypt and of several societies, including the French and Belgian numismatic societies. In all, he published nearly fifty articles on numismatics, mainly from 1928 to 1956. He was awarded the Order of the Nile, the highest Egyptian honour. Marcel Jungfleisch was also a collector. His collection was sold long after his death, on 10 February and 9 March 1972 by Sotheby's<fnref n="5" />.

## The archive

The Jungfleisch archive is held in the form of handwritten index cards, ordered alphabetically, carefully arranged in four large cardboard boxes. Marcel Jungfleisch had the thoughtfulness to leave a sort of introduction to his archive: four handwritten pages, dated summer 1949, signed by him and entitled 'Eléments nécrologiques numismatiques'<fnref n="6" />.

J. Schwartz, in his obituary of M. Jungfleisch, explicitly mentioned: "In addition to his numerous articles, which could not be listed in an obituary, Jungfleisch had undertaken a long-term work: a biography of all numismatists. He was not far from completing his work when death took him from us. Other treasures of erudition lay dormant in his archive. It is to be hoped that the fruit of this dogged labour will not be lost"<fnref n="7" />.

M. Jungfleisch makes his purpose clear in the handwritten introduction to his archive and gives the organisation of his approach: "The aim is to note down once and for all the information I have in order to avoid looking for it each time I need it. First difficulty: who to include? Some have collected without writing, some have written without collecting, many have done both, and then there are the hoarders... and the speculators. The best thing is to exclude no one, not even the forgers, not only because it is difficult to discriminate but also because some maniacs have ended up learning and teaching us"<fnref n="8" />.

M. Jungfleisch eventually did not fully grasp the magnitude of the task when he undertook his great work and did not imagine that he was offering such a sum. Digitised one by one by Louis Brousseau (many thanks to him),

<footnote n="5">⁵ Sotheby's 1972.</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶ I would like to thank the Ifao, its last two Directors, Laurent Bavay and Laurent Coulon, its last two Directors of Studies, Nicolas Michel and Frédéric Abécassis, and its Head of Archives and Collections, Cédric Larcher, for the interest they have shown in this archive.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Translation by the author, Schwartz 1958, p. 242.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ Translation by the author, Jungfleisch archive.</footnote>
and far from the few hundred that we predicted at first, the total number of cards amounts to 17,461. After a complete study of the letter A and a large part of the letters B, C and D, we can estimate that the number of individuals listed in the archive amounts to about 16,000.

Even if we do not have an explanation by the author of the organisation of his archive, they are all arranged in roughly the same way (Fig. 1), and by studying a large number of cards in detail that we can understand the logic behind them<fnref n="9" />.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: A card from the Jungfleisch archive</figcaption></figure>

To sum up the information on the card. The main entry is the name, followed in brackets by the first name(s). Directly under the name of the numismatist is the description of the type of coins collected. Regularly, there is also the membership of a numismatic society. Very often, M. Jungfleisch gives a bibliography, not of the works published by the numismatist but the publications in relation with his life or his coin collection (mainly obituaries). The card also mentions whether the collection has been sold and gives the references if so. It is not uncommon to find the numismatist's profession. Finally, there is a series of cross-references to other records and, from time to time, various comments.

<footnote n="9">⁹ I would like to thank M. Susana and G. Neculaescu who, under the supervision of Julien Olivier, worked on the archive. Thanks to Frédérique Duyrat, Director of the Department of Coins, medals and antiques at the BnF, for setting up an agreement between the BnF and the Ifao.</footnote>
Of course, all the cards are far from being complete. While some are well detailed (about twenty cards exist just for Ernest Babelon), the majority of cards are poorly filled in. According to our initial research and confirmed by a more recent investigation, about a third of the records can be used quickly, in the sense that it is possible to find the individual and link him to an institutional reference authority (Wiki, IdRef, VIAF, ARK, ISNI, etc.).

Preliminary study carried out gives an overview of the archive's potential and in particular of the chronological distribution of numismatists as recorded by M. Jungfleisch (Fig. 2).

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: Dates of birth recorded for individuals with names beginning with A, B, C and D (in part) in the Jungfleisch archive (updated July 1st, 2021)</figcaption></figure>

The first person mentioned in our sample is Charles III the Noble, King of Navarre, born in 1361, on whom Jungfleisch writes that he collected Christian and Arab coins. Then, numismatists appear more regularly from the 16th century until the very beginning of the 20th century. It is not surprising that the largest number of people were born between 1850 and 1870, Jungfleisch being born in 1879.

## The Numismates project

Jacques Schwartz, in his Marcel Jungfleisch obituary, expressed the wish that “the fruit of his friend’s dogged labour” would “not be lost”. It seemed to us that this archive was indeed an extremely valuable asset to offer the community a tool that it does not have, a database of numismatists.

It is not necessary to present here the incredible work launched by numismatic institutions to provide the community online tools for ontology, typology, access to collections.
The first aim of the project is to build a universal database of all numismatists from the Jungfleisch archive. This database will serve as the basis for an online portal that will aggregate all the data from the Jungfleisch archive while making it interoperable with other databases of the semantic web. Among other things, this involves harvesting data from other open data sites to ensure the best search tools for the database (API with Geonames, multilingual and multi-orthograph search of entries with Wiki, IdRef, VIAF, ARK, ISNI, etc).

The use of a common vocabulary (ontology) allows objects to be described in a unique and stable way, and databases to be linked together. This allows two essential things to happen. On the one hand, it will be possible to integrate the information entered in the archive into other databases. On the other hand, if the identifier is known, it is possible to benefit from the missing information, and to fill in the fields almost automatically, as well as to take advantage of multilingual search tools.

The FINA project, led by Bernhard Woytek at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, already offers more than 1,400 entries of numismatists<fnref n="10" />. It offers a great chance to compare information in the two databases (Fig. 3).

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: Dates of birth recorded for individuals with names beginning with A, B, C and D (in part) in the Jungfleisch archive and those registered in the FINA database (July 1st, 2021)</figcaption></figure>

To give an order of magnitude, only 11.4% of the cards in the Jungfleisch archive have been processed. Of course, this is not a competition! The information provided here shows the complementarity of the two databases.

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ 1,473 to be exact (July 1st 2021).</footnote>
The FINA database, apart from the fact that it is already accessible online, has the advantage of making available data that have been verified and organised ('curated data'), whereas the data in the Jungfleisch archive are what one would call 'dirty data', even if the fact that it was composed by a numismatist, from published archives, limited errors.

The *Numismates* project is natively collaborative. It will be built with the Wikidata interface. This will naturally allow us to benefit from the work of the community, in the forefront of which is the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Some of the blocks we want to integrate already exist and are operable. The information in the archive will be automatically put into the database. This operation, which is outsourced, will make it possible to insert all the data present in the files into an existing database in a limited time.

The *Numismates* database will also make it possible to link documents to profiles. In this sense, the Ifao and the department of Coins, medals and antiques of the BnF are already partners in the project. This will allow, among other things, the connection of archives to this database: register of acquisitions of course, but other documents could find a place in it, such as the register of visitors, recently put online by the BnF<fnref n="11" />.

In the introduction to his archive, Marcel Jungfleisch expresses the wish that “this should be on the programme of a future numismatic congress”. We propose to fulfil his wish by offering a beta version of the database for the next international numismatic congress in Warsaw in September 2022.

## Bibliography

* Babelon 1953: J. BABELON, Numismatique grecque, *Congrès international de numismatique*. Paris, 6-11 juillet 1953, I, *Rapports*, Paris, p. 1-30.

* Callataÿ 2016: F. DE CALLATAÿ, “Fontes Inediti Numismaticae Antiquae” : présentation succincte d’un nouveau projet antiquaire, *Anabases. Traditions et réceptions de l’Antiquité* 23, p. 163-168.

* Callataÿ 2017: F. DE CALLATAÿ, *Fontes Inediti Numismaticae Antiquae* (FINA): a short presentation, dans M. CACCAMO-CALTABIANO, M. PUGLISI & G. SALAMONE (éd.), *XVth International Numismatic Congress. Taormina. Proceedings*, Messine, p. 95-99.

* Jungfleisch 1948: M. JUNGFLEISCH, Réflexions de ‘Praticien’ sur les monnaies ptolémaïques en bronze, *Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte* 30, p. 47-60.

* Jungfleisch 1952: M. JUNGFLEISCH, *Les moules de monnaies impériales romaines : essai bibliographique*, Supplément aux Annales du Service des antiquités, cahier n° 19, Le Caire.

* Schwartz 1958: J. SCHWARZ, Nécrologie : Marcel Jungfleisch, *Revue Numismatique* 6/1, p. 241-242.

* Sotheby's 1972: Sotheby's, *Catalogue of the Collection of Coins Formed by the Late Marcel Jungfleisch*, Londres.

<footnote n="11">¹¹ https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc979039/ca59863557167552</footnote>