Asklepios on ancient Cilician coins
Completed at Çukurova University's Institute of Medical Sciences under Professor İlter Uzel (2003–2005), the master's thesis follows the representations of Asklepios on the coins of the Cilician cities one by one: the god's serpent staff, his daughter Hygieia, Telesphoros at his side, and the festival issues struck in his name. The thesis appeared as an article in Belleten in 2005 and is open on Academia with an English summary.
Aigeai: the Asklepieion of Cilicia
Aigeai, at today's Yumurtalık, housed a famous temple of Asklepios in the Roman period; its coins show the temple, the god and the goat (aix) that gave the city its name. Tahberer's “The Temples of Asklepios” (The Celator, 2007) and his presentation “Asklepios and the Representations of His Cult on Ancient Coins” (2018) read temple architecture from coins, from Epidauros to Pergamon and Aigeai.
The coin as a source for medical history
His Turkish essay on “the importance of ancient coins and numismatic literature in the study of the history of medicine” explains why the numismatic literature is indispensable to medical historians: the iconography of healing gods, the location of healing centres, commemorative issues of plague years. In 2004–2005 Tahberer taught the history of medicine in the Classical period, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Hittite Anatolia at Çukurova University's History of Medicine department; in 2007 he gave “Medicine from Ancient Coins” at UBC.
A note on method
In an essay preserved in the sandanart archive, written after attending a history-of-medicine symposium, he observes that historical research must go beyond encyclopaedic knowledge and that claims must be supported by several kinds of source — “the Roman Empire did not collapse overnight from an epidemic; it lived on for centuries after those periods.” That rigour is the backbone of his readings in medical history as well.
