Athens MFB

[Molinari]

Here is the Athenian man-faced bull, another great find from Shannon.  I wonder if that's actually what we see, though.

Thoughts?

ATHENS, AE Kollybos, c. 4th Cent. BC, 0.27g. Obv: Head of man-faced bull facing/ Rev: Cock to right, star above. Unpublished. (BMC 1920,0805.421)

[Enodia]

hmmm...
i don't think this is a 'cock & bull' story. i think the obverse is the usual helmeted Athena right, which would be more typical of Athens.

[Molinari]

Lol...I'm inclined to agree with you.  But here for everyone is the sketch I did and sent you via email.

Nick

[djmacdo]

I am afraid I see a helmeted head of Athena right, also.  There is a danger in hypothesizing something new and unfamiliar on the basis of a single poorly preserved specimen.

[JBF]

What is Kollybos?

It would be best to find something additional to corroborate such a hypothesis.
It looks like a helmeted head to me, then again the reverse to me
looks like a brontosaurus below an asteroid hitting the atmosphere,
coming down to smack him!  So don't take my word for it. 

[Molinari]

I am afraid I see a helmeted head of Athena right, also.  There is a danger in hypothesizing something new and unfamiliar on the basis of a single poorly preserved specimen.

I wonder why the cataloguer at the British museum said a human headed bull? He must have been familiar with helmeted head of Athena types! I wish I could examine the piece in person.  But as it is, I think you are all correct and we'll move this to the unverified section of the site!

[n.igma]

Here is the Athenian man-faced bull, another great find from Shannon.  I wonder if that's actually what we see, though.

Thoughts?

ATHENS, AE Kollybos, c. 4th Cent. BC, 0.27g. Obv: Head of man-faced bull facing/ Rev: Cock to right, star above. Unpublished. (BMC 1920,0805.421)

I think someone is pulling your leg!

What is the source for this attribution and description?  

The cock does not figure in the iconography of Athens, nor the MFB.

Kollybos an anagram for bolloksy?  

[Enodia]

Kollybos an anagram for bolloksy?   

 

lol!

[n.igma]

ATHENS, AE Kollybos, c. 4th Cent. BC, 0.27g. Obv: Head of man-faced bull facing/ Rev: Cock to right, star above. Unpublished. (BMC 1920,0805.421)

At 0.27g it must also be the lightest and smallest bronze coin ever made! Certainly there is nothing comparable in the AE denominations of Athens.

No maching BMC item in the BM database, miniscule AE size, no Kollybos known to anyone or any place, no iconographic parallels with any Athens coinage .... the attribution reads as a load of bolloksy to me!

[n.igma]

... we'll move this to the unverified section of the site!

You may want to reconsider this. It could be a credibility destroyng retention in the MFB book.

As Enodia put it ....

i don't think this is a 'cock & bull' story.

[Molinari]

Here is the link, straight from the British Museum:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1287739&partId=1&searchText=1920,0805.421&page=1

It is their attribution we were going off of!

[Molinari]

Their description actually says human-headed bull to front, so my line drawing is wrong either way.

[Molinari]

... we'll move this to the unverified section of the site!

You may want to reconsider this. It could be a credibility destroyng retention in the MFB book.

I don't think it will destroy the credibility of the book since right now, it is listed as unverified.  We'll have to wait and see what the folks at the British Museum say.  After all, they are the only ones who have seen the coin in hand.  Unless of course someone can match it to an existing coin type (I haven't found a match yet!).

We would never include something unless it is absolutely confirmed.  It's not like we're going to Google "man headed bulls" and include everything we find  

[Molinari]

I just heard back from Amelia Dowler of the British Museum, who also showed it to Richard Ashton.  She writes:

Dear Nick,
 
I’ve just taken a look at the coin. I would say it is more likely to be a man-headed bull than Athena. It is not terribly clear even from the original – I showed it to Richard Ashton who is in today and he agrees that Athena doesn’t seem right from what we can see.
 
Best wishes, Amelia

I'm inclined to trust the eyes of Amelia and Richard, who have studied the coin in hand, and therefore have decided to include it unless my friend Nico (the co-author) strongly disagrees.

Nick

[Molinari]

What is Kollybos?

It would be best to find something additional to corroborate such a hypothesis.
It looks like a helmeted head to me, then again the reverse to me
looks like a brontosaurus below an asteroid hitting the atmosphere,
coming down to smack him!  So don't take my word for it.  

From Brill:

(κόλλυβος; kóllybos). Greek for the corn of grain or pulse, then a weight between barleycorn and tetartemorion (Theophr. Lapides 46). From this, the name for a particularly small coin, attested in Athens from the 420s BC (Aristoph. Pax 1198; Eupolis 233; Callim. Fr. 85). Also two- and three-fold kollyboi are mentioned (Poll. 9,63.72). The tiny AE coins of the 2nd half of the 5th cent. BC are considered to be Attic kollyboi. From the notion of it being the smallest coin, the kollybos (Latin collybus) assumed additional meanings [5]: change; the money-changer's fee (Poll. 3,84; 7…

Also, Amelia just mentioned that Athens is not certain, they just historically have kept the kollyboi there and that Richard thinks Asia Minor...

[JBF]

It definitely should be included somehow in your collection of MFB, whether or not it is Athens.

It was the only kollybos _pictured_ on the BM site, although there were descriptions of quite a few.
I wanted to see what the range of different types were for them, probably a wider range than
for Athens money in general, if it is indeed, Athenian coinage.

A kollybistes is a money changer, (although not attested for the atticists), if kollybos were involved in
making change for foreign currency, then maybe they reflect foreign types more than Athenian types???
I am just guessing though, it would be interesting to know, however, what their purpose was.

Interesting find!

[n.igma]

Here is the link, straight from the British Museum:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1287739&partId=1&searchText=1920,0805.421&page=1

It is their attribution we were going off of!

Well I'll be damned!  I'll have to eat my words on the bollocksy! I learn something new every day, but a 0.27 gram AE Kollybos is particularly novel. Still I struggle to see anything resembling a facing MFB in this small Rorschach test. As for Athens as a mint of origin, it seems most improbable.

It'd serve well to quote the experts names in the write up of this in the book, otherwise there would be more than a few disbelievers. As it inow stands, I remain a skeptic of the attribution and description, experts opinion notwithstanding.

[n.igma]

In iconography the sole "Athenian Kollybos" in the ANS collection bears little resemblance to that posted at the head of the thread.  

http://numismatics.org/search/results?q=denomination_facet:%22Kollybos%22

Bronze Kollybos, Athens, 400 BC - 300 BC. 1944.100.83604

Weight: 0.28  g

Dare I say it... enigmatic .... to say the least.

[n.igma]

What is Kollybos?

It would be best to find something additional to corroborate such a hypothesis.
It looks like a helmeted head to me, then again the reverse to me
looks like a brontosaurus below an asteroid hitting the atmosphere,
coming down to smack him!  So don't take my word for it.  

From Brill:

(κόλλυβος; kóllybos). Greek for the corn of grain or pulse, then a weight between barleycorn and tetartemorion (Theophr. Lapides 46). From this, the name for a particularly small coin, attested in Athens from the 420s BC (Aristoph. Pax 1198; Eupolis 233; Callim. Fr. 85). Also two- and three-fold kollyboi are mentioned (Poll. 9,63.72). The tiny AE coins of the 2nd half of the 5th cent. BC are considered to be Attic kollyboi. From the notion of it being the smallest coin, the kollybos (Latin collybus) assumed additional meanings [5]: change; the money-changer's fee (Poll. 3,84; 7…

Also, Amelia just mentioned that Athens is not certain, they just historically have kept the kollyboi there and that Richard thinks Asia Minor...

I have a feeling that any extremely small bronze is tagged as an Athenian Kollybos by virtue of nothing more that a reference to the existence of such a denomination in a few of the ancient sources many of which are comic theatrical sources.

John Kroll The Athenian Agora XXVI The Greek Coins pp24-25 has a very interesting discussion of the sources and the hard evidence for the Kollybos concluding that the small bronze pieces of which over 600 varieties are documented were not in fact coins... Consequently Percy Gardner, Theodore Reinach, and Margaret Crosby did not hesitate to reject a monetary interpretation for the pieces in question. Like all commentators before Svoronos, they affirmed that they are to be recognized as small symbola in bronze. In this I must concur, leaving the dozen small bronze symbola from the Agora excavations to be published elsewhere. The Kollybos of the 5th Century comic poetry was real enough but, there being no coins that can bee associated with it, merely an abstract value. Therein would seem to be the point of Eupolis' and Aristphanes' comic allusions. One could no more buy or sell something for a kollybos in 5th Century Athens than one could buy or sell something for a non-existent US half-cent today.

The kollybos is in the opinion of some of the most illustruious workers of Athenian coinage a mere mirage, a figment of comic literature and thus close to a bolloksy!

Unfortunately, as in most museums onece something is tagged, that tag remains in perprtuity, no matter the scholarly progress and work that demonstrates the tag to be inappropriate if not incorrect.

I commend Kroll's Agora work in Chapter II Athenian Bronze Coins Fourth through First Centuries BC for anyone interested in understanding where the Kollybos does not fit in the coinage of Athens.

...I think someone is pulling your leg!

.... a very old joke it seems!

[Andrew McCabe]

I can say with certain knowledge that not everything the British Museum puts on its coin websites has numismatic expertise behind it. Errors abound, and the current curator of Greek coins is perhaps not the most dedicated to responding to external queries (recalling a prior debate on this board about misattributions of Athenian coinage, where the curator was less interested or informed than she might have been).

So, just because it is written down that this coin has a MFB obverse does not mean that is what the museum (as an entity of experts) necessarily believes. It might just be an error.

[Molinari]

So, just because it is written down that this coin has a MFB obverse does not mean that is what the museum (as an entity of experts) necessarily believes. It might just be an error.

Anndrew, that's why I asked them to look at it, which they did, both Amelia and Richard, and confirmed that it looks like a facing man-faced bull and not Athena, and Richard added that he thinks it is from Asia Minor and not Athens, and it was just listed under Athens because historically all kollybos were.

[n.igma]

So, just because it is written down that this coin has a MFB obverse does not mean that is what the museum (as an entity of experts) necessarily believes. It might just be an error.

To reinforce the point ....as noted in my post above in the assessment of Athenian numimsmatic experts, present and past, John Kroll, Percy Gardner, Theodore Reinach and Margaret Crosby, it isn't even a coin....The Kollybos of the 5th Century comic poetry was real enough but, there being no coins that can bee associated with it, merely an abstract value. Therein would seem to be the point of Eupolis' and Aristphanes' comic allusions. One could no more buy or sell something for a kollybos in 5th Century Athens than one could buy or sell something for a non-existent US half-cent today.

[Taras]

I would not say it is a MFB, before finding any match or reference, or at least a better picture.
For now I'd put it as "uncertain mint" into the "unverified" issues, quoting the BM listing and expertise by the two questioned english scholars, awaiting further possible (dis)confirmations.
If for the date of publication we should not find any other factors, we will decide about including or not.

...a third option could be to make a section about the iconography of the "brontosaurus below an asteroid hitting the atmosphere", or maybe this could harm the credibility of the book?

John, you made me laugh my head off!

Bye
Nico

[n.igma]

So, just because it is written down that this coin has a MFB obverse does not mean that is what the museum (as an entity of experts) necessarily believes. It might just be an error.

Anndrew, that's why I asked them to look at it, which they did, both Amelia and Richard, and confirmed that it looks like a facing man-faced bull and not Athena, and Richard added that he thinks it is from Asia Minor and not Athens, and it was just listed under Athens because historically all kollybos were.

Nick - with due respect that is not quite what the BM "experts" said. Rather they said it is more likely to be a MFB than Athena and that then again it is not terribly clear (that it is either an MFB or Athena). Moreover Richard Ashton is quoted as saying that it wasn't Athena, but then again he did not state it was an MFB either ... refer below my emphasis added...

I just heard back from Amelia Dowler of the British Museum, who also showed it to Richard Ashton.  She writes:

Dear Nick,
 
I’ve just taken a look at the coin. I would say it is more likely to be a man-headed bull than Athena. It is not terribly clear even from the original – I showed it to Richard Ashton who is in today and he agrees that Athena doesn’t seem right from what we can see.
 
Best wishes, Amelia

I'm inclined to trust the eyes of Amelia and Richard, who have studied the coin in hand, and therefore have decided to include it unless my friend Nico (the co-author) strongly disagrees.

Nick

To be completely honest, what you have here is an out of date and unsubstantiated attribution on a tag from an old collection item in the BM plus an at best equivocal description set against the opinion the Athens Kollybos experts as articulated by John Kroll not a coin. To call it a probable (as opposed to improbable) depiction of a facing MFB on a coin of imaginary denomination based on ancient comedic theatre is a little problematic and requires a little more explanation than that provided by the BM generalists, with due respect to the latter.

I suggest that if you do place this "small symbol in bronze" in the book, then in all objectiveness reference must be made to Kroll's work and conclusions as well as the completely equivocal interpretation of the iconography of this probable non-coin.

[Molinari]

I added it to the uncertain section since the Museum staff doubts the Athens attribution.

But I don't question that these two folks at the BM can look at a coin and make a reasonable assessment.  If they say it looks like a man-faced bull, and the original cataloguer did too, then I believe them, whether we consider a kollybos a "coin" or not (why were they minted at all?).  I trust the judgments of two experts when seeing the coin in hand above our speculation, naturally.