This topic was recently discussed on Moneta-L, but I think will also be of interest here.
Richard Schaefer called attention to an
Elephant denarius of
Julius Caesar, illustrated below, whose
obverse (
elephant side)
had been struck off center and oddly showed a portion of the
circle of dots of a SECOND
obverse die that
had apparently been sunk into the same piece of metal, alongside the main die.
Rick Witschonke of the
ANS pointed out that Bernhard Woytek
had written an article in
German on precisely this subject in Schweizerische Numismatische Rundschau 85, 2006, pp. 69-96. Rick kindly sent me scans of the article, and I summarized it on Moneta-L as follows:
The phenomenon of a single coin showing on its
obverse the
impressions of two different dies that were evidently
engraved side
by side on the same anvil die has been observed on
Greek coins of a
wide geographical and chronological spread:
Segesta,
Sicily, didrachm, late 5th cent. BC
Achaemenid sigloi struck in
Asia Minor, similar date
Seleucid hemidrachm, Alexander I Balas (150-145 BC)
Parthian drachm, Mithradates II (123-88 BC)
Many
Celtic coins, particularly silver coins struck in Gaul in the
first cent. BC.
Actual
obverse dies of this nature for
Celtic coins, plates or cubes
of metal bearing two
obverse dies
engraved side by side, have
recently turned up in two finds of mint equipment in Bavaria, about
which a monograph is being prepared in Munich!
A
dupondius of
Augustus and
Agrippa struck at
Nemausus shows the same
phenomenon of one coin showing impressions from two side-by-side
obverse dies, and Woytek points to two
Elephant denarii of
Caesar,
the Rauch specimen and one in the Milan
collection, that have the
same peculiarity.
Both of these
Elephant denarii are of "poor style" and show the
elephant's two front legs and two hind legs descending in parallel
from
his body to the ground. At least this group of coins will
certainly have been produced in Gaul, where the use of multiple-image
obv. dies was evidently normal and widespread. This supports
Woytek's earlier conclusion, based on coin finds which show this
type only in the west, that the
Elephant denarii must have been produced
in connection with
Caesar's Spanish expedition of the first half of
49 BC, doubtless partly using the silver that he confiscated from the
public treasury in
Rome after Pompey and
his partisans fled the city
early in that year.
The main group of
Elephant denarii, in better style and with the
beast's fore and hind legs descending to the ground at an angle from
each other like two Greek lambdas, does not show double obv. dies
even when the obverses are struck badly off center. They must have
been struck at a different mint, using single- rather than double-
image obv. dies, which Woytek thinks may also have been located in
southern Gaul.
What was the purpose of using double-image obv. dies? Woytek rejects
Crawford's suggestion that they may have been coupled with double-
image rev. dies, so that two coins could be struck side by side at
the same time. The fact that the two images on the obv. die were
generally right next to each other speaks against another hypothesis,
that coins may have been struck alternately from the two images to
prevent the obv. die from overheating. Woytek finally admits
ignorance: obviously the two images must have made the production
process more efficient in some way, but no one yet has been able to
explain exactly how.
Curtis Clay
The second picture below shows an
elephant denarius of fine style and with forelegs and hind legs at different angles, the sort of coin that was apparently NOT struck from double-image
obverse dies.
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