Castulo Sphinx

[moonmoth]

I posted another photo of this coin in a thread on photography, but I always meant to put it here.  These coins look different in style to any others I know of.  The sphinx is most unusual. It is walking on tiptoes, its claws folding back on the feet that are lifted up in a very naturalistic way. 

That helmet is very strange.  It looks like a Roman apex, but can hardly be that, coming from a city that was allied with Rome but still not Roman.  And is that a leash dangling along its back, with a loop hanging down behind?  Is this supposed to be a tame creature?

Bronze AE31 of Castulo in Andalusia, Spain, late 2nd century CE. 30mm x 31mm, 20.53g
Obverse: Diademed head right. Crescent in right field.
Reverse: Winged sphinx advancing right, wearing apex-like helmet. Five-pointed star in right field. KASTILO in Iberian script below.

Click to enlarge.

[areich]

Nice and large and beautifully photographed!

[gallienus1]

A wonderful coin! The helmet looks a bit like the ancient Spanish-Celtic type featured in the website [LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN DUE TO GOOGLE DANGEROUS SITE WARNING]

Regards,
Steve

[moonmoth]

Thanks, Andreas - that's my new camera!

That helmet does look as though it could be the basis of the one on the sphinx.  Thanks for the link, Steve. 

That still leaves that strange "leash" to be explained ...

Bill

[Noah]

That is a really nice coin with beautiful patination and a very interesting reverse!

Best, Noah

[casata137ec]

That is one beautiful coin! So nice in fact, that I think I am going to have to eventually get one! Nice pic as well.

Chris

[moonmoth]

Thanks for your comments.  It's a great coin in the hand, big and heavy.  You can see the Roman influence, but the style is wild.  I am still intrigued by that loop that looks like a leash.  Can you imagine walking one of these in your neighbourhood?

Bill

[Jochen]

A beautiful coin. And it has this strange Celtic feeling!

Best regards

[slokind]

It is always fascinating, even dangerously so, when regional similarity crosses the bounds of different media and scale.  That Castulo coin always reminds me of the painted pottery from Azaila.
Pat L.
I dug out the CVA fascicle for the Nat. Mus. at Madrid on the Azaila pottery by Aguiló (1944) and chose this plate 34 assigned to Period E, which the chart in the text puts in the 1cBCE.
Pat

[moonmoth]

Thanks!  Those clawed feet are much the same, but the bodies and legs on the pot are much more elegant.  Actually, that pot reminded me of the Lascaux cave paintings, which are some 16,000 years older.

Bill

[slokind]

When one for saie was brought to my attention, how could I resist owning at least this one, delightful Celt-Iberian coin?
It arrived yesterday.  When I locate the Archaic sphinxes alluded to, I'll post one or two.
•• 07 04 11 AE 32 (excl. sprue)  25.88g axis ~12h.  Celt-Iberian, Late Hellenistic.  Jaen province, Castulo.  Head, perh. of the emperor.  Rev. Sphinx, of Celt-Iberian type (so Lindgren and Cop., which he cites, and so, as I saw, the style).  Like others, Lindgren dates it (and his specimen resembles mine) c. 50 BC and later. (Lindgren, European, no. 41, on pl. 2 and at top of p. 3).  Though the die-engraver may have thought it a helmet, sphinxes all the way back to their 7th c. BC adoption, and adaptation, by the Greeks from the Near East (meaning Syria and Phoenicia) wore formal floral arrangements on their heads.
Pat L.
CLICK TO ZOOM
See the threads of Doug Smith, with Jesus' pages from Burgos, 1987, and of Potator, cited at the end of Doug's: Discussion topic 64787
Mine seems to be Burgos, 1987, no. 540.

[moonmoth]

That's lovely, and the sphinx is more naturalistic than mine, if that word can be said to apply to a mythical creature.  The wings look like wings and not like feathers, and the tail is just about properly attached and doesn't have a closed loop at the end.   This suggests that my specimen, being more stylised, might be later than yours.

Bill

[slokind]

And here is the documentation for sphinxes' headdress, as promised.  All three of these are from Archaic Corinthian vase-painting, that being what I have most amply documented.
Pat L.
CLICK TO ZOOM

[dougsmit]

While I find the style interesting, my main interest in this coin is the fabric.  My example quoted by slokind

Was rather lightly struck compared to the moonmoth coin but shows the same things that hint as to how the coins were made.  I have trouble explaining the slokind coin but wonder if the blank was struck with the other side up.  I believe the flans were made by casting in either hemiglobal or at least tapered sided indentions in stone molds.  The harder the strike, the more the tapered edges would be flattened and the closer that side would come to being the same diameter as the other.  There are other places that used globular flans (Sicily comes to mind) but these were flat on one side and rounded or tapered on the other.  The interesting part to me is how the comparison of several examples of the same coin speaks to the process better than any single coin could.

[Randygeki(h2)]

Nice!

[moonmoth]

That's interesting.  I would have expected that a flan that was fully globular, or even half-globular, would have been difficult to strike with sufficient force to flatten it, and, using such force, a shallow strike would be very unlikely.   I was supposing that flans like this would have been cast in a shallow mould with sloping sides, so that they would fall out easily when the metal solidified.  Even though metal shrinks when it cools, having straight sides to the mould might slow the process down and make some flans catch in the mould.

Bill

[slokind]

Though mine is less extreme (and perhaps for that reason has a greater diameter), I do see that it is convex on the "heads" side and slightly concave of the sphinx side and has (I would say, if I were sure those candies were sold internationally) the shape of a Hershey "Reese's" chocolate that has sweetened peanut-butter filling in the "sphinx" side (of the greater diameter).
It looks to me as if they cast the flans in stone with rows of hollows and communicating channels (hence the trace of a sprue on mine).
Pat L.

[dougsmit]

Continuing the candy analogy, I suspect something like a Hershey's kiss shaped flan would produce my coin.  I'd tried to test this theory but ate the subjects. 

[moonmoth]

Luckily, Wikipedia shows the shape of Hershey's Kisses for the benefit of European readers ..

Wikipedia Hershey Kiss

Bill

[slokind]

I just noticed, when I fully zoomed the image of my Castulo, and verified it in hand (with 10X loupe, to make sure), that, heaven help us, one of those centering "dimples" occurs on both sides of mine.  I do not see it on moonmoth's and I can't zoom Doug's photo, but I don't think his has "dimples".  It seems that the dimples, in the ear on the face and on its foreleg elbow on the sphinx, where it is fainter but definitely present, are not in the center of the design, as limited by its border, but in the center of the preserved flan and therefore, as observed elsewhere, part of the preparation of the flan previous to striking.
Doesn't it seem likely that batches of these sphinxes were struck and issued in occasional batches, not necessarily by similarly trained workers or in exactly the same place?
Pat L.