Before the turn of the millennia, my local
coin shop literally gave me this non-descript (literally) coin. A hawk-nosed woman's
head, facing right. The
reverse looked to be a quadruped, probably a
horse. Literally, heads and tails.
It is bronze-ish, green and encrusted. And it is small: under 11 mm in
diameter, at its widest. It weighs just 1.23 gm. It's condition qualifies as "
Fine." It not the kind of coin one sets out to buy, unless you're one for 'uncleaned coins.'
Unsalable, it remained an enigma, until now. As I reached the bottom of the barrel, figuratively speaking, in poring over the coin
collection, the little bronze coin resurfaced. A puzzle, unsolved. A lot has changed in the past 25 years. And yet, nothing answered the riddle, not all the reference works, my visits to
coin shows, the online viewing of
collections and blogs, or the heft of coin catalogs. Time to fix that.
Under the right light, at certain angles, there was the hint of features unseen in usual viewing. Some identifying features, and some lettering, perhaps? Under magnification, the key jumped out: isn't that a quiver over the woman's shoulder? Who in Greek and
Roman mythology would have that... but
Artemis, goddess of the
hunt. Her familiars include stags.
Off to the ancient coin
search engine, "AE
Artemis stag" where I got a lot of results. Parsing for
weight and size, I landed on the answer.
Lycia, Bubon.
SNG von Aulock 4286. Too easy? So I thought, so I widened the
search, found some alternative attributions (
Caria, Amyzon;
Lydia, Thyateira), but kept coming back to the same results. I looked for more examples, and I found them. The
search term "stag" pointed to a feature around which there was no consensus. I ultimately found citations of
stag,
deer, and
goat. Best of all, the "
goat" appears to be a die-match, with a nice coin grade of
Very Fine. Seeing the examples, I could then manage to see faint lettering of the
ethnic, BOY, above the "
goat" on my coin, but only when viewed at an angle, in the right light. I welcome any comments and any confirmation of the
von Aulock and
Lindgren citations.
UPDATED:
Asia Minor.
Lycia 2nd-1st C. BC. AE 10 mm (1.23 gm) of Bubon. Draped
bust of
Artemis right, bow and quiver over shoulder. / Stag standing right. [BOY] above.
Fine. Gables Coin, c. 1997.
SNG von Aulock 10 (Lykien) 4286;
Lindgren III 626;
Sear Greek II #5261.
cf. Leu Numismatik Web
Auction 16 #1091; Künker 133 #7677.