I've been looking though the various sources I have, primarily
Simonetta's and Mørkholm's works on these coins, in the vain hopes of finding something to make sense of the
field monograms on Cappadocian coinage.
After a lot of reading of old scanned copies of
numismatic chronicle, all I've really been able to determine is:
Simonetta did the first serious
work on cappadocian kingly coinage and
his reference numbers are used today alongside
HGC to reference these. That said, there are obvious errors in
Simonetta's works, largely argued and documented by Mørkholm, but never consolidated into a useful single reference
work. For example,
Simonetta misattributes some Ariarathes V coins to Ariarathes IV, making for interesting
attribution challenges today.
HGC 7 tried to wade through this, but does not differentiate much between
monogram and
exergue marks.
The only solid
work that differentiates
field monograms by different reference numbers is really
Simonetta, but
Simonetta didn't cite every
monogram and includes remarks like "off
flan", "illegible", etc. and it's clear he worked with limited samples, pre-internet. He also
had not defensible theories on the meanings of inner, outer, left and right
field monograms.
Simonetta's hypothesizing about the correlation between
exergue letter, in order of the
greek alphabet, corresponding to regnal year is accepted by many, but Mørkholm makes an almost unbreakable case that at least in some cases (for example,
corresponding to regnal year 33) this cannot be the case based on incidence of coins in
hoards and the period in which they would have
had to
mint that volume.
So all that to say, is there a modern definitive
work on
monograms an exergues of these coins that I am missing? any updated and
good theories on their meanings, sequencing and use?
And because every
good thread needs a photo, here is an example of
HGC 811 from my
collection, in this case an Arirarathes V that
Simonetta mis-attributed to Ariarathes IV (i.e.
Simonetta 26).
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=174097