Nikopolos reverse, snake on cippus?

[whitetd49]

A strange little AE18.  Snake coiling and rising from the top of a cippus or pedestal, definitely not a cysta.  On the obverse, only the left side is preserved but the legend appears garbled.  The portrait appears to be a young, bare headed Caracalla.  Anyone ever see this type before?

[slokind]

Let's see whether SS and his son had the same reverse die or just corresponding dies.  By the way, the Caracalla Caesar (no laurel) dates the head of SS nicely.  Given the long thread in Numism, maybe I shouldn't have called it a cippus, but it is what RIC calls by that name.  Anyhow, I don't know whether it's solid or a basket (cista), but the baskets usually have flipped up lids.  The Caracalla is a very, very pretty little coin.
31 12 04 Æ 17  2.81g  axis 6:00  Nicopolis ad Istrum.  Septimius Severus, laureate, head to r.  AV K S    SEVEROS.  Rev., Snake rising off the top of a cippus; its tail is at left, near the K of the ethnic, so it is not emerging from a basket, and Imperial period altars are usually of a different shape; the snake, also, is not wound around the cippus, as commonly.  The head of SSev might be compared with the Gentianus ones.  NIKOP    POLI PROS I (probably).   This kind of snake not in AMNG I, 1 for Septimius; that is why I got it.
Pat
P.S. Obviously, just corresponding dies, so not necessarily issued at same time.

[curtislclay]

The obv. legend of whitetd49's coin is retrograde, M AV KAI--ANTWNI... beginning at lower left, like AMNG 1500, 1511-2, which have other reverse types.

[whitetd49]

Thanks to you both!  Pat, your specimen is nice to see as I could not find a corresponding reverse on coins of Nikopolis from Commodus to Severus Alexander!  I will keep looking, perhaps another is out there somewhere.

[slokind]

Ah, here's why yours looked familiar.  Doug Smith has one, and Curtis reminded me of it: with the retrograde legend.  See just below the middle of his Thrace & Moesia page:
http://dougsmith.ancients.info/thrace2.html
Pat

[whitetd49]

Yes, Doug's specimen appears to be from the same dies.  Unfortunately, he does not provide an attribution.  It is tempting to say this coin is unpublished but I suspect that it is lurking in one of the less frequented texts, perhaps one of Lindgren's volumes.  The following is Doug's specimen:

[slokind]

For the obverse with retrograde legend, see Pick, AMNG I, 1, p. 400, nos. 1511-1512 (the obverse not illustrated).  For the reverse subject, see possibly, p. 399, no. 1506 (Pick was trying to describe a poor specimen).  For Caracalla as Augustus, Pick has no obv. die with this peculiarity, but two reverse dies, a Concordia / Homonoia, p. 415, no. 1597, and a club / cudgel,  p. 417, no. 1608.  I'm not sure Varbanov's publisher had the means of printing backwards letters, but for whatever reason I see none there (vol. I, Bulgarian language edition).
Actually Doug did identify it: Mint, Nicopolis ad I.; Region, Moesia Inferior; Dynasty, Severan; approximate date, 196-198, Caracalla as Caesar; denomination, one or two units, perhaps called assaria.  You can't identify any better than that!  And 'attribution' is just Nicopolis, Severan.
From what I wrote above, when it comes to listing these little coppers and calling them by list numbers, you can see how they resist that, by their very nature.  As he says elsewhere, Doug wanted to instruct without distracting beginners or scaring them off.
Pat L.