Elagabalus,
AE22, 5.11g, Laureate
head r., M AYR ANTWNINOS AYG / Reclining river-god facing l. with branch,
NIKAIEWN SAGARIS
To make a long story short, this uncommon Nicaean
reverse with the river Sagaris is attested in large modules starting with
Julia Domna and in this midsize module starting with Julia's son
Caracalla (RG457.463 [Pl. lxxix.7], M AYRH ANTWNINOS AYG, with one further example noted in
Isegrim). For this
rare type, RG for once pictures the
obverse as well as
reverse; I believe that the RG coin may actually be a variant version of mine also featuring
Elagabalus not
his cousin. Both
portraits bear careful comparison with the variant obverses employed for another uncommon
Elagabalus reverse, an
elephant walking right with mahout.
Though the second
portrait looks a lot like a flattering conflation of
Elagabalus' appearance with
his cousin's, the first
portrait's "froggy features" leave its own subject in little doubt. I think RG and
CNG's cataloguers were right to assign the right-facing-mahout
type to only
Elagabalus, but there is a
still rarer
Caracalla (?) left-facing-mahout
type that if used as a model for E.'s later issues may
help to account for the greater-than-usual convergence between the two emperors'
portraits on some mahout coins and the RG Sagaris example as well; for the
Caracalla type see this earlier post in Nicaean Addenda:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=45586.msg298606#msg298606