Phoinix spreads its wings

10 / 09 / 2025

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Phoinix Platform for Studying Ancient Amuletic Jewellery. Coordinated by the Palladion Association for the Study of Classical Antiquity in Budapest and the Department of Greek and Latin at University College London, and developed in international collaboration, the platform provides a digital corpus of ancient and post-antique amuletic jewellery preserved in museums and private collections worldwide.

It is designed to serve as a research tool for scholars and students of classical antiquity, offering structured access to detailed object records, images, and the relevant bibliographic references. Phoinix has emerged from a previous enterprise with a narrower focus, the Campbell Bonner Magical Gems Database, but has a far broader material scope. It aims to include a variety of object groups (astrological gems, Late Antique stone amulets, metal amuletic jewellery, ancient gems in mediaeval seals, and so on), and is designed to accommodate simultaneous research projects conducted in international cooperation. Phoinix builds on the scientific achievements of CBd, but it is an independent platform, which is constantly revised, updated and enlarged.

Read about our team, partners and projects here: we are grateful to all institutions and individuals who have helped us launch this project and continue to support our mission.

Phoinix takes flight with over 200 objects under its wings from over a dozen collections: the first institutions whose material appears in the database include the Antikensammlung of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, the British Museum, the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Münzsammlung in Munich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, as well as two large private collections of amuletic jewellery, the Skoluda Collection (Hamburg) and the Shick Family Collection (Europe – Israel).