BMC Caria Plate?

[Adrian H]

Hello, I'm trying to pin down what I believe is a 100-year discrepancy between the mint date of a Rhodian drachm I purchased versus when the auction house believes it was minted. From the mass and diameter listing in FORVM's copy(https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=BMC%20Caria), I believe I'm right, but I'd like to check my work against the plates at the back of the book. Unfortunately, the plate in question is terrible! Only 3 of the 20 coins scanned well. Does anyone have a copy of BMC Caria who'd be willing to share a photo or scan of pate 40? Here's the coin in question by the way (https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=180271).

[shanxi]

see

https://www.academia.edu/30286164/Head_Barclay_Vincent_Caria_and_the_Islands_MAP_and_PLATES_1_45_London_1897_A_Catalogue_of_Greek_Coins_in_the_British_Museum_Bd_18_

[Adrian H]

Thanks shanxi I'm glad others have had that issue and uploaded those pictures. I feel really confident about my dating now seeing that plate.

[Altamura]

BMC Caria is from 1897 and thus not really up-to-date  . For coins from Rhodes e.g. the articles by Richard Ashton are a more recent source.

Regards

Altamura

[Adrian H]

No free pdfs of Ashton that I could see

But this was a pretty egregious error, I think, so BMC was able to answer my question. The coin was sold as being from 88-84 BCE, but that doesn't make sense to me. I really don't know much about Rhodian coinage, but coins from that era should have  Helios facing forward, shouldn't have an incuse reverse and should use a different weight standard compared to the coins of 160-88, which is when I think mine is from.

[Altamura]

... The coin was sold as being from 88-84 BCE, ... but coins from that era should have  Helios facing forward, shouldn't have an incuse reverse ...

Indeed there are Rhodian coins with Helios looking to the right and an incuse on the reverse, dated to 88-84 BC:
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10889289
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10889290
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10844696

Perhaps you should show us your coin to clarify that further  .

Regards

Altamura

[Altamura]

... Perhaps you should show us your coin to clarify that further  . ...

I just have seen that you did already, sorry for that  .

Your coin has as magistrate ΘΡΑΣΥΜΗΔΗΣ with an Isis crown as symbol. In G.K. Jenkins, "Rhodian Plinthophoroi", in G. Le Rider et. al., "Kraay-Mørkholm Essays. Numismatic Studies in Memory of C.M. Kraay and O. Mørkholm", Louvain-la-Neuve 1989, this is the number 243 and assigned to group E. Jenkins dates this group E with "I think we can well set group E during the period ca. 88-84.". This is where this dating comes from.

In Richard Ashton and Andres Meadows, "The Letoon Deposit: Lycian League Coinage, Rhodian Plinthophori, and Pseudo-Rhodian Drachms from Haliartos (yet again) and Asia Minor", The Numismatic Chronicle Vol. 168 (2008), pp. 111-134, the dating of this group E is discussed again, with the result "In the absence of any convincing evidence favouring a later date, I should prefer to leave Group E in the 80s BC". The article can be seen online:
https://www.academia.edu/756565/The_Letoon_deposit_Lycian_Coinage_Rhodian_plinthophori_and_Pseudo_Rhodian_drachms_from_Haliartos_yet_again_and_Asia_Minor

Here you find the coin as well, with a dating a bit earlier: http://hno.huma-num.fr/browse?idType=895

On acsearch these coins with the Isis crown are also all dated to 88-84 BC:
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?term=rhod+plinth+isi&category=1&lot=&date_from=&date_to=&thesaurus=1&images=1&en=1&de=1&fr=1&it=1&es=1&ot=1&currency=usd&order=1

Regards

Altamura

[mauseus]

No free pdfs of Ashton that I could see

Ashton's papers from Numismatic Chronicle are available on JSTOR.

Regards,

Mauseus

[Adrian H]

Altamura, thank you for the thorough response. The sense I'm getting is that conclusions drawn from 130 year old catalogs should be taken with a grain of salt:)

I'll have a look through the other sources that have beeb suggested and report back!

[Adrian H]

and assigned to group E

It's unclear to me how exactly Jenkins classified these coins into groups. I actually got my hands on a copy of Jenkins's essay a few months ago, but didn't get the chance to read it before I returned it. Sometimes it's hard to get excited about reading journal articles for fun when your job is to read journal articles. Looking at some photos I took of the Jenkins pages there are two magistrates that this coin could be issued under: Thrasymenes (group C) or Thrasymedes (group E). But the magistrate name on my coin is too long to fit on the plinth, so the engraver just wrote      , which doesn't solve the confusion. A table in Jenkins shows that only Thrasymedes has an Isis crown, so I'm mostly convinced.

You could argue that the symbol is instead the top half of a fulmen, since we already know this engraver has a hard time fitting everything in and a weight of 2.90 grams makes this coin slightly overweight for group E coins, but much closer to the center of weight distribution for group C coins.

Overall, I'd say I'm comfortable reverting the coin to it's original date.

[helvetica]

If you are really brave, have lots of patience and do not have high blood pressure, you could try the HNO online website for coins of Caria. You need those characteristics because the HNO database is one the most frustrating websites I have ever used.
Looking for the "pseudo-Rhodian" drachms struck in Mylasa (Helios with an eagle covering his right cheek/rose) you select Mint: Mylasa and it tells you it has 217 entries for Mylasa. It shows you 100. If you are lucky, you MIGHT get a "NEXT" button at the bottom, but that is not always the case, apparently due to the current mood or vagaries of the server.
If you are lucky enough to have the "next" button, look at a coin then click "back to list" at the bottom, do you get back to the previous page? Nooooooo ! It takes you to the full list again.
Once you are on a page, the "refine results" does not always work as it should. I have been writing to them since HNO online first went online about the problems and they always tell me "we are improving the website and it may take some time".... so far it's been about 5 years.
So my advice, if you DO see the "next" button at the bottom, first open a text editing file and copy and paste the entire first page, then click "next" and do the same there. So that when you get back to a list you don't want, simply click on any coin and replace the number at the end of the link with the number of the coin that you want to see.

[Curtis JJ]

you could try the HNO online website for coins of Caria.

I do find that using HNO Caria requires being very careful when/where you click and how you retrieve/view records! But I find it pretty valuable and use it often for a variety of reasons.

I think the front page still mentions the print volume planned for maybe a couple years ago. (I was just using it a moment ago, but now I get the blank "Error" page when I try to check, so maybe I'll check again in a few hours. Maybe this thread caused a spike in user activity!)

Any idea if the print vol. is still in the works?