Henry Frendo writes:
Chev. Joseph C. Sammut, who passed away last week at the age of 81, was Malta’s leading and best published expert on numismatic history. Apart from being a noted collector himself and a member of the Royal Numismatic Society since 1957, Joe was a great Melitensia buff who appreciated and treasured research works especially those about our country.
His two main volumes probably remain The Coinage of the Knights of Malta – of whom he was one – written together with Count Felice Restelli (1977), and From Scudo to Sterling (1992), which fully and insightfully covered the British period. Joe repeatedly updated his histories of currency until more contemporary times. A few years ago he even had a comprehensive history published in Maltese, which he had asked me to introduce.
Chev. Sammut was a distinguished member of my panel in a symposium at the Central Bank of Malta during which only last month he gave an erudite, brilliantly illustrated presentation on the ‘picciolo’, the smallest coin ever minted in Malta, and on another coin from Grand Master Pinto’s time.
His lectures on Malta and the Maltese as seen through coinage from the earliest times to the present were well appreciated by post-graduate students at the University’s Institute of Maltese Studies, where he sometimes lectured.
Joseph C. Sammut took his work seriously, tirelessly, meticulously, also in various boards on which he served and to which he contributed precious advice – among those at Farsons, Mepa and perhaps above all the Central Bank.
I know that he was completing another research project which I hope may be published posthumously, together with his recent paper at the Central Bank symposium, delivered last month, in its proceedings.
A man of principle and deep values, Chev Sammut was a highly respecful person just as he was in turn fully deserving of respect. As has been well engraved in many a historic coin: “not money but trust”.
To his dear wife Mary (first met in Melbourne in 1986), to his niece Margaret (for years a next-door neighbour in Attard), and to his various other relatives, my heartfelt condolences.