For Photography Challenge and OTD reasons: Aegeae

[slokind]

I would have posted my new arrival in Coin OTD from Forum, or in Provincial, where I posted its mate, but I just photographed the two of them in the first images useful for any purpose at all taken with my new camera which I only half know how to use, and I promised Arizona Robin to share agonies with her.  Mine is a Nikon D80 with an f.2.8 60mm macro lens used on it.

I had to get this coin!  To go with my Hadrian/Perseus of Aegeai, because it has Amaltheia with the Infant Zeus crowning her, because of the puzzle of its NOT being exactly the same denomination as the Perseus one: that is a BILLON tetradrachm, and this is a SILVER of about the same diameter (±25mm).  The Perseus one weighs 12.56g and is thicker. and the Amaltheia weighs only 9.93 but is obviously good silver.  So what do you call it?  It ought to be worth at least as much, metallically.  The Amaltheia coin has that nude bust with a scrap of drapery,  and the billon tets have armor (bust from in front).  And why did they do that deliberately Seleucid thing, the vertical legend of  on this silver one?

I posted the Perseus in Provincial (I think)** when I got it, but, such as it is, this is a new photo, to match (there is no Staples hereabouts, so mail order will be necessary to get a fluorescent ring).  This is my Ott Lites in a different place (so as to cast the shadow on the dish-bottom away from the coin image).
Pat L.
** Yes. https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=42703.0

[moonmoth]

I can't answer your questions about the coins, I'm afraid, but here is a perfectionist critique of the photos.

They are of a very high standard.  There is only a small amount of blown-out reflection on the top rim, hair and laurel of Hadrian on the silver, and none at all on the billon.  That's not easy to achieve. 

The obverse of the silver is slightly unevenly lit, with the top left being lighter than the lower right.  Again this is hard to eliminate, and perhaps it is emphasised by the bottom right of the coin being rubbed, because this does not occur on the other three sides. 

I would prefer a slightly lighter background, but it is quite evenly lit and not distracting.  It is not completely neutral.  There is both a lightness and a warmth gradient from left to right, but this is not something that jumps out.

These are photos I would be very pleased with.

The logic of the silver is interesting.  How does Amalthea come to have a cornucopia if her goat still has both horns?  I suppose she could have had more than one goat.  But sometimes Amalthea IS the goat.

Bill

[slokind]

The goat is the punning badge of Aegeae / Aigeai.  My poor little copper coin is so worn I had to post it in Identification Help.  But Aegeae it is.  P.L.

[slokind]

Cf. at head of this thread.
Not just to post a newer photo, but because I do not know enough about Imperial tets and cistophori to get further by myself: This coin is real silver, not billon, and it weighs less (9.93g) than the Synnada coin cited below, a real Hadrianic cistophoros (Metcalf, p. 72, cat. 296, pl. 20, 10.24g).  The Prieurs do not give weights for the 4 specimens that they cite (indeed, weights are not so relevant to the billon tetradrachms, I suppose); they say of their no. 715A that it is 'probably a "tridrachm"', and this coin is no. 716.  They do not say that no. 716 is real silver, quite different from the Perseus reverse, no. 717, of which we have seen several specimens recently, which is heavier and thicker and billon.
Of course, Hadrian's cistophori are such as to have merited Metcalf's monograph, The Cistophoris of Hadrian, ANS Numismatic Studies, no. 15, 1980.  They are intrinsically Hadrianic.
The only one with Amaltheia, and in the same pose but with a goat not identical to the Aigeai badge, is his no. 296, and he says (loc. cit., note 2) that the Amaltheia reverses of Apamea, Laodicea, Aegeai and Crete are different: "Amaltheia appears in precisely this form only on the coinage of Synnada (note 1); elsewhere she is seated or accompanied by curetes or both.  BMC Phrygia, which he cites in note 1, for Synnada, nos. 53 and 56, are for Gordian III and Gallienus, the former pl. XLVII, 3, are not only later but bronze.
Of course, the silver, lighter, sometimes slightly smaller in diameter Hadrians of Aigeai are not cistophori.  Either they count as 'tetradrachms' made lighter because the metal is 'real' silver or they are a sort of quasi-cistophori: not Imperial issues, not dated COS but, I think it is, in the Caesarian era of Aigeai.  And, as the Prieurs say, that is AD 117-118, which is tantamount to saying that they are earlier than the real cistophoric tetradrachms which, so far as I have checked as of now, are COS III and which have portraits that don't look like the long-necked glamorous Hadrian of COS II denarii, such as the Pietas below.
I need really expert help with my treasured Amaltheia.
Pat L.

[curtislclay]

According to Walker, Metrology of Roman Silver Coinage II, p. 89:  Aegeae's silver coinage of 117/8 consists of two denominations, a unique [at that time] tetradrachm and a small series of tridrachms.  All dated 164=117/8, perhaps to be connected with Hadrian's journey back to Rome after Trajan's death in August 117.  "They are all very debased, the tridrachms particularly so."

p. 86: the tetradrachm 77.5% silver, 4 tridrachms 68.0, 61.5, 65.0, and 56.5%.

In other words the tetradrachms are not billon, but as pure or purer silver than the tridrachms, according to the specimens Walker tested.

This coinage is unrelated to the later cistophori of Hadrian, I think.  Interesting how close the portrait of the tridrachm is to the Roman denarius you show!

[slokind]

Thank you!  All my other 'Syrian' tets are either earlier or later than Hadrian.
I wish I could show you the Amaltheia 'in hand'.  It doesn't feel like as nearly pure silver as the Pietas denarius but it is quite unlike the Antioch tets that I have, which are as billon as can be: not the prettiest of alloys.
Anyhow, now I must try to hunt down an Amaltheia in this pose earlier than AD 117-8.  The Synnada Metcalf no. 296 is COS III, and the Amaltheia type, the pose and all, not just the ID as Amaltheia, seems not to be at all common.
Pat L.

P.S.  I'm afraid I don't know where the line between silver and billon is drawn.  On the one hand there is a Seleucus II, which is Silver, and on the other is (among those at hand) Otacilia Severa at Antioch (attached) which really doesn't LOOK like silver, though I suppose it's a good part silver.  Somewhere in between is my Vespasian (attached)
• 14 06 05 AR tetradrachm  14.68g  12h  Vespasian, laureate, head to r.  AVTO[KR OVESP]ASIAN    [OS KAISAR SEBAST]OS  Rev., Eagle l., wreath in beak, stg on club, palm in l. field. (CP1364).  ETOVS    NEOV IE[ROV A or B.
Prieur, p. 19, no. 122 (Group 6).  RPC Group 4, nos. 153-5
but I don't have the actual coin in hand right now.  I'll have to look up the definition.  But both of the attached were taken with different lighting and camera...  I must bring them home.  The difference between my two Aigeai Hadrian coins is striking.
P.L.