Thank you
Meepzorp and Walter,
You are both too kind.
If I remember right, it was a matter of only a few minutes at most to connect the coins to Iasus once the
legend could be read as "ΙΑΣΙ." But you must understand, the normal
ethnic for Iasus is "ΙΑΣΕΩΝ" or some abbreviation thereof (e.g. "ΙΑΣΕ"). Before the new coin
types came to light, the substitution of 'Ι' for 'Ε' in the city
ethnic was, as far as I could tell, unattested on coinage and the rest of the extant textual record relating to Iasus. I
still find this situation somewhat perplexing, so while I picked up on the Iasian
attribution at an early date, there were
still plenty of questions that needed ironing out before I could be confident in the
attribution. Even the designs of the new coin
types were unlike anything seen before from Iasus. For other researchers, such as Richard
Ashton, Koray
Konuk, and Fabrice
Delrieux, none of them apparently noticed the "ΙΑΣΙ"
inscription on some of the Apollo/nymph bronzes until recently. It was always assumed that they read "ΙΑΣΕ." Ironically, in this way, these numismatists were spared some of the difficulty in attributing the
type to Iasus, which
Ashton had done as early as the year 2000.
My initial thoughts concerning the
identification of the mysterious object beneath the Apollo/shrimp bronze was either a
dolphin or the tail of the shrimp. I believe Kressa supported the latter possibility and that was what I went with until Richard
Ashton reviewed the article. He was certain it was not the shrimp's tail, but was baffled on just what it could be. By this time, I was running very late in editing the manuscript for publication, so I felt a simple acknowledgement that something strange was present on the coin would have to do. Even though I
had bid and won the coin, I have never been able to study it in hand, because tragically, it was lost in the mail along with two
Roman provincials that were very important to me...
Thank you for posting that link, Walter. I
had intended to write the Iasus article long before, but yes, that particular
thread was a deciding factor in when I started. I am one of several writers who contribute two articles a year to
The Numismatist's "Ancients"
column. When the time came in October to begin
work on my second piece for 2016, I was at a loss to decide what to write about. Time was of the essence. The coinage of Pactye was one possibility, but I
had already dealt with the
Thracian Chersonese in a past
column. Iasus not only presented new territory for me in that respect, but thanks to the
Forvm thread you
had started, a lot of my research on Iasus was already written out and explained. So I decided to go with that subject.
If you get tired of waiting, Walter, I can send you a PDF copy of the article. In January, I might upload it to my academia.edu page, after the next issue of
The Numismatist débuts.
Merry
Christmas!
Best regards,
Mark Fox
Michigan
