I was waiting for you PtolemAE 
Heard you were the guy to talk to about a possible Ptolemaic.
Thank you for responding!
Any other possible directions anyone could point me in?
Wish I could be more helpful.
Can you tell me what you think is on the
reverse? That would be very helpful.
Here are some notes you may find useful:
The
obverse does bear a resemblance to some 'Aphrodite'
portrait small bronzes of
Ptolemy IV (possibly a little later). Those have this
style of
portrait with the female figure wearing a 'stephane' and usually have a
reverse with double
cornucopiae and
inscription 'BASILEOS PTOLEMAIOY'. They are *very* common and often sold as 'Cleopatra' coins on
Ebay to maximize the
price, but no reputable reference book catalogs written by academic experts on
Ptolemaic coinage (
Svoronos,
Noeske, Morkholm,
Weiser, etc.) attribute them as such (rather, about 150 years earlier), and imho the idealized 'crowned'
portrait doesn't even remotely resemble 'real' (well-accepted coin
types of
Cleopatra VII) Cleo
portraits. But I'm not sure precisely what this coin is because I just can't make out the
reverse. It would be cool if it was some unseen
type that needs to be studied, but the
reverse is too unclear for me to make any judgement one way or another.
I'm pretty sure I've seen 'sprue ears' on
Seleukid bronzes, too, but I don't know if this is
Seleukid, either.
Some folks associate 'sprue ears' on
Ptolemaic coins to a particular time period but I've found that feature is actually not very helpful in narrowing down the time period much. This coin does have a 'look' that is suggestive of the
Ptolemaic type I described above (
Svoronos 1160-1161) but I can't tell what it is from the
obverse alone. Maybe someone else will recognize it immediately.
IOW, imho we'll need to know what this coin depicts on the
reverse to go further.
PtolemAE
