Here's a bulletin-board which I'll update at need for my earlier posting on
Isegrim:
--- There is after all a way to
search by
weight (
gew) or
size (
gr) as well as by
minting-dates (
pz) in
Isegrim: along with other relevant descriptors, for
weights enter a lesser and greater value --
gew1:3.72 gew2:3.82, for example -- which are processed as lower and upper weight-limits and give you everything in between. (If any specimen in a particular entry has a
weight that's within your weight-range, it will show up as
part of your
search results.) Something similar holds for
gr1 /
gr2 inputs (see new
demo) as well as for minting-dates (
pz1 /
pz2); from the updated English introduction at:
Isegrim - English Introduction
followed up with a trial-run or two, I've concluded that this is the gist of it: you can input one year, e.g.
pz:18, in the hopes that it corresponds closely with the date of the entry you're seeking, or else you can enter an earliest and latest, e.g.
pz1:10 pz2:60, and get everything that was probably minted in that range for the other descriptors in your search-string.
MAJOR CAUTION: Being copied from a great variety of sources, not all
Isegrim entries include
weight, size, and minting-date specs (though they generally do give at least one or two), so a targeted
search with particular
weight, size, or minting-date specs may miss coins that are actually in
Isegrim. By a similar token, you may miss coins included in
Isegrim if your input includes legend-inputs that do not allow for any variants or faults in the legends recorded in
Isegrim.
HELPFUL HINT: Subject to the potential exclusions that I just now mentioned, you can also employ bounded searches of these various sorts to cut down a broad yield of results to a manageable size; while a very broad
search, for example
vt:.*os, yields too many results to display,
vt:.*os gr1:22 gr2:24 yields 470 results, just below the 500 truncation-point.
New demo for size-searches (scan posted below) The coin pictured below is a badly misidentified
Caracalla AE25 -- "
Artemis and
Apollo from Seleucia [!]" -- that I recently purchased on Xbax. Searching
Isegrim with the search-string
vt:caracalla rt:heads 2 rt:head man l gr1:24 gr2:26 (vt --
obverse type; rt --
reverse type; gr1 -- boundary-size #1; gr2 -- boundary-size #2) we get
Hygieia and
Asklepios from Eirenopolis,
Cilicia, which the
legend confirms is correct.
---
Isegrim includes virtually all
Asia Minor listings from
RPC I and from
Lindgren III ("
SLG LINDGREN III"), so its coverage extends down through 1992 and 1993, when those volumes were printed, and somewhat beyond (just two listings from SNG München (
Munich) 20 [1995] and only intermittent listings from
RPC II, printed 1999; I have noted one listing
corrected in 2001, a single
auction referenced from 2002 [
AUKT GORNY 118 1720], and one study repeatedly cited from 2003 [
ZIEGLER AMS 2003]); many hundreds of entries from
SNG PFALZ 6 = PfPS 6, also published in 2001; you can test other SNG coverage by searching
zit:.*SNG X.* where X stands for the rest of an SNG title, for which now see the SNG titles below in Reply #9). With the search-entry
zit: or
vgl: (for "Compare") and a catalogue-entry in form "
RPC I 2417.*," for example, you can summon up virtually everything else that's included in a given printed entry from
RPC I;
Isegrim is thus also a
digital RPC I for
Asia Minor, and a digital version of whatever else
Isegrim incorporates, though its uptake of
RPC I seems especially thorough and painstaking.
Isegrim includes some coins not others for marginal figures and mints, for example, "Rhoemetalces" or "
Cyprus"; here you're definitely better off using alternative sources, not mainly relying on
Isegrim.
--- Field-insignia (
VF,
RF) and
countermarks (
VG,
RG) can be very useful in worn-coin ID's, but the
Isegrim entries for all these descriptors have quirks of their own; a
good way to explore them is to run open searches with each of the pertinent descriptors (
VF,
RF,
VG, or
RG:.*), and then see what you get. Letter-content appears with a prefix intended to sort letters, values, and dates ("
LET AS," "
VALUE I," "
YEAR GXR" = 163); letter-content in
VF or
RF will also appear in
VS or
RS, but without the fresh prefix (thus
RF: YEAR GXR but
RS: P'LAYIOPOLEITWN ET GXR). Here is a more or less typical output for an
obverse countermark arrangement; note that each of the terms constitutes a
good input in its own right:
VG : ROUND / VALUE D / ROUND / HEAD MAN L / EMPEROR"Round," "oval," and "angular" are often but not always used to distinguish the shape of a countermark-strike; in this case repetition of "round" means we actually two
obverse countermarks on the same coin, with "
head man l" and "emperor" both referring to the second round countermark's subject or content. These descriptions can vary even for the same
countermark; thus these all seem to be the same
countermark on coins from
Lydia ad Sipylum,
Magnesia:
VG : ROUND / HEAD WOMAN R / TYCHE
VG : ROUND / HEAD WOMAN R / TYCHE / WITH / TURRETED
VG : ROUND / HEAD R / WITH / RADIATE <TURRETED> Numbers in parentheses found in some of these entries indicate which specimens out of several described display which field-insignia or which
countermarks; these distinctions are not always clear and not always
complete, but
still often
help fix a coin's
provenance.
Isegrim reports some but not all of the
Howgego numbers for cited
Greek Imperial countermarks;
Howgego can thus complement
Isegrim and
vice versa, since
Howgego does not report pre-Imperial coins which quite often share
countermarks with later issues.
--- If you are searching particular divinities' names it's important to follow the name with a wildcard-extender, for example "
zeus.*; without that, the
search won't include special cult-aspects of
Zeus, for example
Zeus Kelaeneus or
Zeus Lydios (other random examples:
Artemis Ephesia or
Hekate Triformis, and remarkably also
Zeus Sarapis; note that some cultic names like "Kelaeneus" are oddly half-Latinized). Generally speaking you shouldn't give up on a name-search without trying a few wildcard-extenders, since there are some erroneous name-entries in
Isegrim (*) and since the formats and spellings of Romanized Greek names will vary more often than not. (Transcribed Greek forms are favored for Greek personal names -- but not place-names -- in
Isegrim, e.g. Nikias,
Herakles,
Dionysos,
Asklepios, but again this is not altogether consistent, as witness half-Latinized "Hephaestos.") Similarly, if it's not absolutely clear who is depicted on either the
obverse or
reverse of your coin-type, you will need to review all the plausible candidates till you actually find a clear match; not all beards make a
Zeus or a
Herakles. If you are not sure whether a left- or a right-facing
portrait is historical or quasi-mythical, you should probably
search vt:.* man l or
vt:.* man r, since
Isegrim reserves the term "
portrait" for
portraits of historical subjects; even a coin-profile of the personified Senate is classed as a "
head" not a "
portrait." In connection with two-portrait coins where there's room for debate about which
side is "heads"
Isegrim sometimes wavers or duplicates entries; in those cases you should always
search twice, switching entries for
obverse (vt: / vs:) and
reverse (rt: / rs:).
--- As I noted in the original posting, in
Isegrim there is often an arbitrary
side to what form an "exact" input takes (even place-names include some anomalies,
e. g. "Trajanopolis" for "Traianopolis"); there are too many instances for me to note here, so you will want to note them for yourselves, for example, "pricecrown" for a prize-crown or
urn, "temple-front of 4 columns" for the (four-columned)
face of a temple, "stern decoration" for
aplustre, "branch laurel" or "
wreath laurel" for a laurel branch or
laurel wreath, and so on. The most singular case I have noted: on coins picturing the Rape of
Persephone, she is listed as Attribute rather than
Type (a mere Attribute at her own rape?), and called "
kore" instead of "
persephone," thus
rt:hades ra:kore, probably just because Hades is holding her. Deployed various ways, there are other motifs that can show up as "
types" or as "attributes," infants,
animals, or
birds, to name several; since there are a few verbs used to modify "animal" in
Isegrim, i.e., fighting, jumping, sitting, or standing, you may do well to follow "animal" (and indeed other substantives, "
wreath" or "branch" for example) with a wildcard-extender (=
.*). "Infant" oddly may call for a leading or preceding wildcard-extender ("vt:.* INFANT" or "rt:.* INFANT") to gain access to any tagged variants, for instance "HORUS INFANT" or "PLUTUS INFANT."
(*) Some stealth-errors in the way names are entered in
Isegrim produce entries that look right but actually aren't; I discuss one example at
Discussion topic 289816If a
type ought to show up in
Isegrim, it generally will, but it may take a few variations on your search-parameters.