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Author Topic: The Use of Double-Image Obverse Dies for Ancient Coins and the Elephant Denarii  (Read 6728 times)

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Offline curtislclay

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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.
Curtis Clay

Offline curtislclay

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Walter Holt then sent me images of several other sorts of ancient coins, some of them in his own collection, others located on the web, that also show impressions from two adjoining obverse dies, but were not included in Woytek's list:

Ephesus AR Diobol, 4th cent. BC
Alexander the Great AE, 3rd cent. BC
Sardis AE, 2nd cent. BC
A couple of Judaean AEs, 1st cent. BC

I repeat below his pictures of an Ephesus diobol in his own collection, and two Judaean bronze coins.
Curtis Clay

Offline areich

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I once had a coin from Thessalonika that clearly showed 3 obverse die impressions,
though it's not as clear in the picture.

Andreas
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Offline Robert_Brenchley

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Given that the visible area of the second die is so small, can you be certain that it is a different die?

When it comes to Judeans, my current hypothesis is that they were struck, with no quality control worth mentioning, in a strip and separated afterwards. Sometimes the dies were misplaced. If anyone has one that's clearly been struck with two different dies of the same type, I'd be very interested to see a pic. This one shows a 180 degree double strike with what appears to have been the same die (I wonder how it got turned round?), complicated by an overstrike with the YNTN type.
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Offline curtislclay

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Robert,

I wouldn't exclude that some of the Jewish bronzes might be mere double strikes, but most of the coins listed surely must derive from a single off-center strike that shows parts of two or three obverse images engraved side by side on the same die.

If they were double strikes, the second strike would surely have notably damaged the first strike, and would also have deformed the flan, making it thinner and more spread in the doublestruck section.

This is not the case on the examples cited: neither of the images is damaged in any way, and the surface of the flan between the edges of the two images is absolutely level, without any sign of deformation or demarcation.

If you're still skeptical, consider the surviving Celtic dies in Munich that I mentioned, one of which Woytek illustrates: a metal plate meant to serve as an obverse die, bearing two adjoining obverse images in incuse!

I said that Woytek was uncertain why double-image obverse dies were employed.  On rereading his text, I find that he does give a quite satisfactory explanation, based partly on suggestions by earlier scholars.

In my own words:  reverse dies had to be hammered hard to impress the designs, so naturally they were kept single, mounted on a shaft to concentrate all the force of the blow onto one small area.

Obverse dies, in contrast, were mounted in the anvil, and merely had to RECEIVE the blows from the reverse dies!  In their case, it made sense to engrave them on a larger plate or cube of metal, the better to endure the onslaught of the reverse dies without cracking or breaking.  And, once you were using a larger piece of metal for the die, why not save trouble by sinking two or more images into it, so you could switch to the second image if the first one got damaged?  Plus, as Woytek suggests, dies had to be hardened by tempering, and you would save time in the tempering process if every obverse die you treated carried two or more images.

One suggestion that Woytek does leave undecided: maybe the double images on the obverse dies facilitated a system of alternate strikes at the same anvil die by two different teams of workers standing on opposite sides of the anvil!  Interesting to me, in view of Colin Kraay's insight that many Roman coins were apparently struck at anvils where two different reverse dies were applied alternately at a rapid tempo, resulting in the numerous surviving overstruck reverses from different reverse dies when the workers failed to remove a completed coin from the obverse die!


Curtis Clay

4to2CentBCphilia

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To my mind, the curve of the dots on the Caesar denarius are such that they could only result from a double strike if the first strike was almost completely off the die to the left. That would have to be one incredibly bad strike.

Mark

Offline areich

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Robert, I don't know whether they are different dies, I just think it's unlikely that
they managed 3 non-overlapping strikes on an 18mm coin. I just posted it as another example to the coins
in Curtis' second post.

Andreas
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Offline Robert_Brenchley

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I agree that a double strike will result in a damaged strike if the two overlap. but if they're working their way along a strip of dies, say, it's possible for two strikes to overlap a single planchet without affecting each other, unless the dies are significantly oversize.

Areich - that's a very interesting coin! Why would anyone have three dies arranged in a triangle?
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Offline Rugser

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Hi

Is this a double strike ?

Best regards
ser

TRPOT

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I wonder if it's possible that, in the case of the elephant denarii, the die was damaged and somebody used to empty spot on the matrix to carve a new die... in the field, having to keep up production and make do with what was available.

Offline curtislclay

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That seems unlikely, for two reasons:

We know that a number of other coin types were regularly struck from multiple-image obv. dies. So why should this phenomenon be an isolated emergency measure for this particular group of elephant denarii, rather than their normal means of production, especially since there are historical reasons for locating the mint in Gaul anyway, where the use of double-image obv. dies is known to have been common?

More generally, I doubt Crawford's repeated assignment of many imperatorial coinages to "travelling mints."  Much more likely, in my view, is that these coinages were produced at a variety of already-existent local mints, using their engravers, smelting facilities, etc., which the various generals had commandeered for their own use. Robert Kokotailo has recently expressed similar doubts on Moneta-L.
Curtis Clay

TRPOT

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The thought only crossed my mind because the dies look so amateurish.

 

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