Presents up to 80 masterpieces of Byzantine, Islamic and Western art as presented in coins, medals and related works of art from 5th to 15th centuries. Publication coincides with the traveling exhibition, ENCOUNTERS: Travel and Money in the Byzantine World, opening at the British Museum in Summer 2006, and the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies at the British Museum, 21-26 August 2006. This new volume accompanies and complements the exhibition ENCOUNTERS: Travel and Money in the Byzantine World, which opens at the British Museum in Summer 2006, before traveling to the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, England in February 2007. At the heart of this highly illustrated and accessible volume is the notion that to study coins and medals is to the study the history of communications and movement of people and ideas. From the end of Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople, coins circulated and constantly changed hands in the markets of towns and cities, in rural communities, along pilgrimage routes, between stationing armies and local populations, at the customs offices in harbors, and at other major entrances to the Byzantine Empire. This volume looks variously at city markets and the exchange of goods between different parts of the Byzantine Empire; at Byzantines traveling to the West; including trade between the Svear and the Romans and trade with Britain; Byzantines traveling to the East, including Armenia, Anatolia and China; the Byzantine legacy in the Islamic world, including the cult of Alexander the Great; Western merchants in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The study concludes with the story of late Byzantine emperors traveling to the West, and the impact their journeys had on western European art.