Ancient Coin Stories

About this coin:

First, it obviously has a big chip. That allowed me to afford the coin, because purists dismissed it but I gobbled it up since all the major details are still there. My story about the chip is that clearly someone (most likely Ptolemy II) climbed up the Pharos and threw it off for good luck. It then chipped on the rocks below.

For a good summary and speculation on this issue, see the Ockinga and Sheedy article listed below. In summary, recent research has challenged the earlier attributions that this was a lifetime

The first question is: where was it minted? Was it in Memphis, the capital of Egypt at time of Alexander‘s arrival, or Alexandria, which would become the capital? While there remains some debate, most assign it to Memphis. The current belief is that the Alexandria mint began issuing coins around 320 BCE, and this was issued before that.

More uncertain is: when was it minted? Here, there has been a gradual adjustment downward.

To better understand the logic on when it was minted, it’s necessary to look at the mint mark, which consists of a crowned ram’s head, a solar disc, and two upright ostrich feathers. It was this mint mark that led Lenormant in 1849 to determine that the symbol alluded to Alexander as Zeus Ammon, and the image was of Amon-Re.

Later on Svoronos studied a vast collection of coins gifted from an Alexandrian merchant to the Athens Numismatic Museum. He deduced that the thunderbolt on some of these coins matched later issues with Ptolemy‘s name, and therefore assigned those coins to Ptolemy I. This coin and one other he assigned to the period of Kleomenes of Naukratis.

Next came Newell, who examined the famous Demanhur hoard, which contained very few of these tets. Nevertheless, for some reason he described the mint mark of my coin as the god Khnum. He provided no reason for it, but for some time the attribution stuck. When Newell dated the hoard to 318 BCE, he then surmised that the Egyptians were the first to depict Zeus with legs crossed, and that it was copied by Sidon in 325/324 BCE. Therefore, he estimated that Alexander coin production started in Egypt in roughly 326/325 BCE. Finally, he also associated a large number of tets bearing a rose to Egypt based on how common they were in the hoard.

In 1974, Zervos performed a die study of the coinage and agreed with Newell that their strong similarities suggested a short minting period and his research also led to a slightly later beginning date for minting, at 324-322 BCE. He also proposed, based on a breakage in the dies, that the mint may have been transferred from Memphis to Alexandria in 320 BCE.

Price, who is the gold standard for studies in Alexander coinage, mostly agreed with Newell here and added little. In 1997, however, Le Rider challenged the statement that the Memphis issues were the first to cross Zeus’ legs based on finding more Sidon tets in Egypt than Egyptian tets in Sidon. He therefore concluded that the Egyptians had copied Sidon and therefore the Egyptian tets were minted later, either at the very end of Kleomenes’ reign or at the beginning of Ptolemy’s.

Lorber, the top expert in Ptolemaic coinage, mostly agreed with Le Rider and gave a date of 323 BCE for their start. While she didn’t rule out Kleomenes, she felt Ptolemy was the more likely minter.

While there’s been no successful attempt to determine a uniform system of mint marks within Alexander’s empire, there has been a lot of speculation about this particular one. Since Alexander the Great was associated with Amon-Re, though it’s uncertain whether he ever went through the ceremonies to be pharaoh, it’s thought that this mint mark’s goal was to justify his position through the association.

It’s interesting to note that, while Alexander‘s silver coinage was convenient for both Greeks and Persians, since one could identify either Zeus or Ba’al on the reverse, such associations didn’t work in Egypt. This was very much a foreign currency, so the mint mark may have served as a familiar sign to Egyptians. While earlier it was believed to associate Alexander the Great with Amon-re, Lorber and Ockinga/Sheedy identify it as Philip III. In my opinion, it may not have mattered. One needed to only associate Alexander with Amon-re and the rest of the hereditary rulers should follow.

The one question I’m not sure has been answered, though, is this coinage is believed to be early but was not the first silver coinage minted in Egypt under Alexander‘s name. Through die studies, that’s thought to be the rose mint mark. Therefore, if all of these were minted beginning around 322 BCE, then why wasn’t the Ram’s head minted first? The rose coinage was far more abundant as proven both through finds and dies. That question makes me think we’re not done yet examining these coins.