I have always wanted one of the larger bronzes from Egypt, having admired many from afar. They certainly have some gravitas in hand and could do some serious damaged if launched at someone across the room! I have attempted an attribution but I would appreciate some validation / other information that anyone is able to provide me.
AE42, which I understand is a drachm.
Obv:– Diademed head of Zeus Ammon right
Rev:- PTOLEMAIOY BASILEOS, eagle standing left, head left, on thunderbolt, wings closed, between legs
The dealer had it noted as Ptolemy III Euergetes, 246-221 B.C. Is this correct?
...
OK after dozens of attempts the image finally loaded in all the way and yes, it's a SIGMA and yes, it's
Svoronos 992. It's possible the production overlapped late
Ptolemy III and early
Ptolemy IV but a
good guestimate is ca. 221-210. It appears these ceased production before the latter
part of
Ptolemy IV's reign because other
types are found in
hoards that appear to be from later in
his reign - including the 'max size 45gm' ones (with open-wing
eagle reverses and similar control marks as these big ones) and a new series with 2 eagles on the
reverse with
max size of about 40gm and no
cornucopia or any control marks. These bigger 69gm coins (and their half
denomination about 34.5gm) seem to have ceased production by that time so we figure they're from
his earliest years. No way to be 100% sure.
Hoards are the major evidence we have but we don't always know why certain groups of coins might have been kept or buried together and others deliberately or accidentally excluded so we can't be sure just from
hoards that these coins ceased production by 215 or 210. But it's probable. It would make sense if they switched to a 30% lighter 'maximum size' coin at some point that they just stopped making the bigger ones. Could be they just brought those lighter coins in as an intermediate
denomination, too. The shared controls leave some ambiguity and these folks aren't well-known for their extensive paper trail of coinage records.
There is another hint that these are early and possibly overlap with
Ptolemy III issues based on some
rare unpublished smaller
denominations (with SIGMA) that are congruent to smaller
Ptolemy III 'chi-rho' coins in design. And there are a handful of unpublished pieces known from Tyre (with a club instead of
cornucopia) that have SIGMA or SIGMA EPSILON of intermediate to smaller sizes similar to
Ptolemy III Tyre issues. I like comparative evidence esp. when it complements the
hoard analyses but the
hoard contents seem to get more attention in the scholarly literature. In this case they seem to point in the same direction which gives me more comfort on the dating.
PtolemAE