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Author Topic: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help  (Read 808 times)

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Offline maridvnvm

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AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« on: June 24, 2011, 12:10:19 pm »
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,  :GreeK_Sigma: between legs
The dealer had it noted as Ptolemy III Euergetes, 246-221 B.C. Is this correct?
My attempt at attribution came out as Svoronos 992, which Wildwinds places under Ptolemy IIV.
I am assuming that these were all minted in Alexandria.
Is there any more detailed dating of the issues?

It is quite a heavy lump at 70.23g, 41.93mm, 0 degrees.

It has been a tough one to get a decent photo of because my setup is designed for much smaller coins.

I am sorry for the numerous questions but this was a bit of an impulse buy and well outside any of my reference material.

Regards,
Martin


Offline SRukke

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Re: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« Reply #1 on: June 24, 2011, 01:27:42 pm »
Can't help on attribution but I wanted to say very nice. The obverse portrait is better than most. I have a couple and they are great coins because they're so huge.

Have you tried the Ptomely Project?  www.ptolemybronze.com

Size does matter regardless of what others say.  ;D

Offline Randygeki(h2)

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Re: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2011, 04:20:11 pm »

It has been a tough one to get a decent photo of because my setup is designed for much smaller coins.


I just got a large Ptolemy and yeah, its a pain to photo. Can't help either but very nice coin!

Can't help on attribution but I wanted to say very nice. The obverse portrait is better than most. I have a couple and they are great coins because they're so huge.

Have you tried the Ptomely Project?  www.ptolemybronze.com

Size does matter regardless of what others say.  ;D

 ;D

Offline PtolemAE

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Re: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2011, 10:29:20 pm »
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,  :GreeK_Sigma: between legs
The dealer had it noted as Ptolemy III Euergetes, 246-221 B.C. Is this correct?
My attempt at attribution came out as Svoronos 992, which Wildwinds places under Ptolemy IIV.
I am assuming that these were all minted in Alexandria.
Is there any more detailed dating of the issues?

It is quite a heavy lump at 70.23g, 41.93mm, 0 degrees.

It has been a tough one to get a decent photo of because my setup is designed for much smaller coins.

I am sorry for the numerous questions but this was a bit of an impulse buy and well outside any of my reference material.

Regards,
Martin



My access to this forum has slowed to a complete crawl and often now freezes so I get about the top 1/2 of your photo and the load stops dead (other web sites are working just fine).  Don't know what's wrong and hope I can see your whole coin at some point.  From your description Svoronos 992 is correct.  Whether it's a 'drachm' or not is open to some interpretation but it might as well be - it's the largest size of its series and there are 1/2 sizes (993).   Yours should have a cornucopia at the left of the eagleAlexandria mint.  Some books say Ptolemy III but quite likely Ptolemy IV.  Hard to be 100% certain and it doesn't much matter.  It's 'late 3rd C. BC' and that's fine.  Many of the intermediate denominations seen with earlier series appear to be missing from this one. 

As for the mass, they range quite a bitAverage is 69gm and I've seen them up to 79 gm and down to about 60.  Big impressive coins that seem to be the tail end of the period of really big coins from Alexandria.  After these we see the biggest size at about 45gm and with an open-wing eagle on the reverse (some of which have SIGMA control mark as well). 

There are some variations on this coin in the controls - SIGMA, SIGMA EPSILON (including a very rare retrograde version), ad SIGMA IOTA EPSILON which looks like a vertical bar joining the SIGMA and EPSILON.  All are catalogued the same but easily distinguished and probably deserve individual attention.

You can see this and related coins at www.ptolemybronze.com in their 'series' contexts.

PtolemAE

Offline PtolemAE

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Re: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2011, 12:45:44 am »
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,  :GreeK_Sigma: 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

Offline maridvnvm

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Re: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« Reply #5 on: June 25, 2011, 05:36:23 am »
Many thanks for the exhaustive reply PtolemAE. That answers all my questions.
Regards,
Martin

Offline maridvnvm

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Re: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2011, 09:27:43 am »
I apologise for the problems that you had loading the file. I hadn't realised that the image was quite as large as it was. I had already greatly reduced the image from the size taken by the camera. I have removed the old image and reduced in size to 50% of the size again. If this is still too big then I can reduce further.
Martin

Offline PtolemAE

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Re: AE42 Ptolemaic bronze help
« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2011, 02:54:44 pm »
I apologise for the problems that you had loading the file. I hadn't realised that the image was quite as large as it was. I had already greatly reduced the image from the size taken by the camera. I have removed the old image and reduced in size to 50% of the size again. If this is still too big then I can reduce further.
Martin

You're quite welcome for the commentary on your coin.  It's impossible to give definitive dates to many Ptolemaic coins.  The kingdom left fixed designs in place for long time periods that sometimes overlap reigns for their own reasons.  I favor comparative/relationship methods to help narrow things down.   

There was something going on that severely bogged down this web site but the net-fog seems to have lifted and things are coming in at the usual normal speed now.  I guess it wasn't the picture's size, per se, but it is always better to have a 'net-friendly' image.

Your coin is a nice example of the type.

PtolemAE

 

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