Ancient Coins pierced for Other Uses

[Mayadigger]

Ave!

In an another post https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=130516.0
our friend Quadrans mentioned that he'd always been interested in things like when a coin was used for some other function.

That goes for me, as well.

As seen in the photos, many were obviously pierced by a round awl and while others were pierced with a rectangular instrument, to be worn as a pendent (?), but not all.
Some were holed in the center, others had multiple holes, and others, way too many that do not make any sense at all.

These "holed" coins are dated from 1st Century - 3rd Century LRBB issues.

What are your thoughts, please?

Best to all,

Kevin

[*Alex]

I read somewhere (can't remember where, but suspect it would have been a book rather than online) that coins were sometimes used to make emergency repairs to armour. That might account for some of the multiple holed coins.

Alex

[Molinari]

Parts of fishing lures? 

[Virgil H]

Interesting answers so far, could be so many possibilities. I love the fishing and armor repair suggestions. There was, I think here on Forum, a pic of a Roman bronze coin that had an unusual edge hole, could have been a bad flan, could have been used to pry something and broke. When I lived in West Germany in the late 70s, I found a Nazi zinc coin that was used with plaster to repair a hole in the wall under wallpaper (still have it). I was helping the landlord paint the wall and the wallpaper was probably as old as the mid-late 1940s (although who knows when the wall was actually repaired, but the wallpaper was old enough - I was a lowly enlisted man with a family and that place was cheap, LOL, although Germans told me I was being ripped off). House was built in early 1800s, three floors, each an apartment. I think use for a variety of repairs is a thing for low value coins, I have used them to pry, open bottles, as levelers, welding patches, after Germany I have actually used them with drywall to repair a hole in the wall, so many things.

Virgil

[quadrans]

Hi,

Interesting pieces…

My friend Stultus (here) have some opinion of this …
I will send him this thread …👍👍

Regards

Joe

[Curtis JJ]

I'm reminded of the Egypt, Alexandrian Drachms that frequently come with a distinctive pair of piercings. As Wendellin Kellner said of my example below (published in Teil 7, Abb. 26 of his 2009 book Münzstätte Alexandria), these are generally believed to be for used as "amulets" (funerary). On any single specimen it may not be obvious, but across a large sample it becomes clear they were (almost) all placed at 3h and 9h on the reverse.

(Yours, of course, could be pierced for entirely different reasons; I'm sure it varies widely by context.)

CNG wrote the following of a Drachm from the Staffieri Collection (not my specimen, but it could easily apply to mine or any Alexandrian Drachm with such a double-piercing):

This particular piece has been pierced twice, likely serving as a funerary piece on a Romano-Egyptian mummy. Coins and other amulets were woven into the fabric of the mummies to serve as talismans against the spirits that would try to harm them on their way to the afterlife, the coin would pay the toll to Charon, the Greco-Roman tradition of paying the ferryman, which had been absorbed into Egyptian customs. Mummification was still practiced by the Egyptians through the third century AD until Christianity became the dominant religion of the empire.

-- TRITON XXVI (10 Jan 2023), 584: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10389239  (actually a rare deviation from 3h/9h arrangement. Was it for "artistic reasons" -- to avoid damaging the scene of "The Judgment of Paris" -- or for "practical reasons" -- perhaps to be woven along the edge of a garment?)

My specimen is below:

Egypt, Alexandria. Antoninus Pius AE Drachm (35mm, 22.25g), Year 10 = 146/7 CE.
Zeus reclining on eagle.
Type Reference: RPC IV.4 online 13589 [LINK]
Ex Voirol, Steger (Mnzhndlg. Basel 6), AK Collections; acq. Sternberg 1985; W. Kellner 2009 "plate coin" (7/16).
(For the Coin + ex-Hermann Lanz [1910-1998] Library annotated copy of the 1936 Munzhandlung Basel 6 Katalog: [external website LINK])

[Molinari]

That’s a great coin, Curtis.

[Mayadigger]

Ave,

Another pair of holed for pendant coins -

Celtic AE Tetradrachm and a very worn Kingdom of Bosporus with original wire twist.

[Virgil H]

I love that wire twist. That really brings home the use of the coin.

Virgil

[Victor C]

I have this one that I suspect was going to be used as a sieve; at least until the punch that split it.


Magnentius
A.D. 350-3
25x27mm 8.7g
D N MAGNENTIVS P F AVG; bare-headed, draped & cuirassed bust right
dd nn avg et caes' target='_blank'>SALVS DD NN AVG ET CAES; large Chi-Rho flanked by A-W
In ex. SAR
RIC VIII Arles 194

[SC]

I am working on an article for the next Koinon on holed coins - have been working on it off and on for a year now.  Fascinating area.  There are many different uses that they were put to, but only a few uses that are common.

There was a coin found with many holes like Victor's that was attached to pottery fragment and was almost certainly used as a sieve - likely as a wine sieve as most ancient wine was heavy on the lees.  However, another option for Victor's coin is that the Christian Chi-Rho symbol was intentionally defaced.

There are other extremely rare uses too, like a sestertius used as a sword pommel or a denarius riveted to a plate from a lorica segmental armour.

There were also ideas put forth in numismatic literature for which there is no evidence or proof - coins were almost certainly never used to make armour, they simply make no sense as scales (lorica squamata) and there is no evidence of coins being nailed to military standards (despite that being the description of a lot I once acquired long ago).

Most uses were much more mundane - jewellery or toys.  Roman grave excavations have revealed that the most common use was as cheap jewellery, often on small necklaces or bracelets for infants and children where they were strung along with things like beads, shells, animal teeth, etc. 

SC


 

[Mayadigger]

Ave!

Shawn wrote - "There was a coin found with many holes like Victor's that was attached to pottery fragment and was almost certainly used as a sieve - likely as a wine sieve as most ancient wine was heavy on the lees."

Now, not sure, but I believe that "sieve" theory may be not correct. In the past I have had the opportunity to decant fifteen or so 25 year-old bottles of Port Wine with very crusty lees.
Have any of you done the same?

My example is 22mm and the holes are just about 2mm.  Such lees are quite heavy, manky, and cloying, savvy? In my opinion, attempting to "decant" any wine through such tiny holes would simply not work, just an ounce or two at one time would clog the tiny holes, trust me. Too laborious and time consuming, you know? Who had the time to do such in antiquity? Most likely, no one, back in those days, drank their wine, lees or not. 

Your thoughts/

Best, Kevin

[Ken W2]

I too have read somewhere (can’t remember where, after all there is sooooo much out there to read) that coins sometimes were nailed to standards or wooden clubs for a prize in games among soldiers or performance in battle. While that sounds logical to me (think of Ahab nailing the guinea? to the mast as a prize for spotting the white whale) I know of no real evidence to support that assertion.

[Ken W2]

Where I saw the article (maybe it was just a blogpost) about the nailing of coins to a club as a prize has been nagging at me so I searched again for it online.  In the process I saw a few articles about mast stepping and the tradition of placing coins under under the mast of a vessel. It is thought that the tradition, which is still followed today, dates to ancient times and that Roman sailors fastened coins under the mast or to its base so in the event of a sinking they would have coins to pay Charon to ferry them to the underworld. Maybe that is what this one was used for !