Numism > Reading For the Advanced Ancient Coin Collector
Isis
slokind:
That is great! I don't want the last word, but that is a great Hadrian aureus. And Eckhel's Servius can't help being somewhat Hadrianic both in his style (granted it's in translation) and in his content. Eckhel, like Winckelmann, was an 18th c. man, different in many ways as they were. Here, the important thing to notice is that Eckhel died before the decipherment of hieroglyphics, so that he was one of the last great scholars to have Egypt wholly from Greco-Roman evidence. In 1799, the Rosetta stone was discovered, and that was the year of Eckhel's death. Eckhel's Egypt was virtually Hadrian's Egypt. So though he was cognizant of most of the magistrates' names on coins, his Egypt was pre-decipherment (rather as Arthur Evans' Crete was pre-decipherment) and pre-archaeological (very pre-Flinders Petrie and Wallis Budge).
Thank you! Pat L.
moonmoth:
Thanks for the context. You can look stuff up all you want, and learn a lot, but you don't really know what it means until you know everything else as well ..
This is your thread and I don't want to deny you the last word, but as it is about Isis, I would like to add this well-known and readily available coin of Julia Domna. RIC IV 577. Sear and RIC both say that this is Isis with the infant Horus at her breast; she has one foot on a prow, and a rudder rests on an altar behind her. RIC mentions her peaked head-dress. This is one of those Roman reverses which look like an attempt to write a message in code, and end up being rather complicated.
The Dictionary of Roman Coins (which is a joy to have a physical copy of) only gives this as a "female figure," quoting Akerman. Do you think it really is supposed to be Isis?
The prow and the rudder look as though they belong to Annona. The head-dress is not Isis' usual one. The legend, the happiness of the age, occurs with images of children elsewhere. The altar might just be an indication of piety. With your knowledge of context and statuary, what do you think?
(p.s. That infant looks like an awkward handful!)
slokind:
That is a LOVELY Julia on your denarius. Oh, yes, I'm sure it's Isis and Horus/Harpokrates. The Septimius family likes the whole Greco-Egyptian family. I have not the slightest doubt that this is just a minimally exotic form of Venus Victrix with Eros at her feet (and cf. Jupiter with little 'baby' Emperor at his feet~Septimius and Caracalla), which is to say that the obstreperous infant is a crypto-Caracalla and (rather like some of the Ptolemaic queens before her, who, I guess, started this game) Isis is equated to Aphrodite, and Julia is fancied as the mother of the Divine Child of their choice: SAECULI FELICITAS, indeed. As for the Annona-like prow, Rome did get grain from Egypt, didn't she? Pat L.
• EGYPT. Berlin, StM. Late Period: Dyn. XXVI (Saitic). Blue faience statuette from Thebes of Isis nursing baby Horus. c. 600 BCE. H. 0.097m (that is, less than 5 inches). The Greeks and then the Roman world found and adopted this cult and spread it everywhere. Isis appears on regular Roman denarii just as Juno, Diana, and Venus do.
curtislclay:
The traditional ID as Isis depends, I suppose, on the motif of nursing a child and on the association with a ship. Isis is often shown nursing Horus, though usually, it would seem, in a seated pose. Or, without the child, she can be shown standing on a ship and holding the sail.
The "altar" behind might just be the stern of the ship, as the rudder leaning against it would suggest. On new-style Eastern coins the "altar" on left is usually of the same height as the prow on right, as though both did belong to the same ship. At Rome the "altar" is usually higher, suggesting two different objects, but maybe the prow has just been made smaller so Isis can put her foot on it, while the stern is enlarged so the rudder can be clearly rendered. As Elberling remarked, is it likely that Isis would turn her back to her altar?
Two other details require explanation: the polos Isis wears on her head, not her traditional "horns, disk, and plumes", and the small wreath she holds in her r. hand, not readily visible because overlapping her dress and rarely if ever mentioned in descriptions of the type.
It would be good to check whether this coin type is discussed in the several exhaustive articles on the motif of "Isis nursing Horus" that are cited in LIMC.
Another argument in favor of the Isis ID: the type may well date to 200 and reflect the imperial family's visit to Egypt in 199-200. The type certainly belongs after 198, because very rare on bronze coins, but before 202, since it was copied on the new-style Eastern coins which ended in that year. The unique Isis and Horus sestertius that I know shares its obv. die with another unique coin showing the Hilaritas type of Cohen 76 (holding long palm and scepter); and this same Hilaritas type is die-linked on aurei to the dynastic series of 201-2.
moonmoth:
Curtis, that is some nice observation. I had a browse through the Coin Archives specimens and it seems that some of the engravers in Rome didn't really know what they were engraving. Here are some examples from Coin Archives showing from Rome, a definite altar and a definite ship's stern; and from Laodicea, a definite ship. There are plenty of indeterminate objects from Rome too - these two are from engravers who at least had some definite objects in mind.
The wreath is interesting. Some coins don't seem to show it. I was interpreting this gesture as offering the breast to the child, but I can see on my own coin that it could easily be a small wreath.
There are coins of Caracalla showing Serapis (the other major Egyptian deity in Rome) with a small wreath made of corn ears. I wonder if this could be the same sort of thing? Alternatively, it could be a teething ring for the child. (That last is a wild surmise not supported by any evidence.)
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