This
blog post is written by Dr George Watson, a Roman historian and numismatist,
with particular interests in the social and economic history of the 3rd century
AD and bronze coinage in the Roman world. His research focuses on the ways in
which coin production reflects societal relations in the ancient world, and in
particular the relationship between the Roman state and the wider population of
the Roman empire.
When I
began working in the Department of Classics at Swansea in January 2021,
colleagues quickly made me aware of the brilliant collections of the Egypt
Centre and in particular—given that my research focuses on the coinage of the
Greek and Roman worlds—its coin collection. Conversations with Ken Griffin made
it clear that not all of the Egypt Centre’s coins had been fully documented.
Before the COVID-19 Pandemic, Professor Nigel Pollard organised weekly
workshops for students to document the coins, but this had to be curtailed
because of the subsequent lockdown. Following on from this work, we put
together a plan to make it easier to use the coins in teaching, research, and
of course, displays in the Egypt Centre itself.
The first
step was to identify and catalogue the coins, and to record all of this
information in the Egypt Centre’s online database. This would ensure that
anyone wanting to use the coins—for whatever purpose—would know what was there!
We then planned to link the coins to a number of numismatic portals hosted by
the American Numismatic Society and
others that would make the specimens more readily available to researchers—more
on this below.
All of the
coins had already been photographed, which meant that I could do a lot of the
work from home during the pandemic, but I also spent a number of afternoons in
the stores of the museum, looking more closely at the coins, weighing them, and
recording other measurements. Some of the coins had already been tentatively
identified, but I wanted to make sure that reference was made to the latest
scholarly literature wherever possible. This initial cataloguing allows a
summary of the collection as follows: 14 Greek coins, 2 Roman republican coins,
56 Roman imperial coins, 13 Roman provincial coins, 20 Parthian coins, and 9
post-antique coins. Below is a brief discussion of some of the highlights of
the collection:
.jpg) |
| Fig. 1: Silver denarius of Domitian |
The
majority of coins in the collection are Roman, and the principal coin of the
Roman empire was the silver denarius, of which EC1527 is an excellent example (fig. 1). It is a
denarius of the emperor Domitian, who ruled AD 81–96, weighing 2.93g and with a
diameter of 19mm. The inscriptions on both sides are in Latin and give
Domitian’s names and titles. Because the emperor’s titles changed throughout
his reign, we are able to use this information to date the coin to the period AD
95–96. The reverse image shows Minerva, the goddess of wisdom who was
Domitian’s patron deity.
.jpg) |
| Fig. 2: Bronze sestertius of Caligula |
Alongside
the silver denarius, the Roman empire’s monetary system also included bronze
and gold coins. EC1534 is an example of a bronze sestertius, four of which made
up a denarius (fig. 2).
It was struck during the reign of the emperor Caligula (AD 37–41). Although the
coin is quite worn and the image difficult to make out, the reverse originally
bore an image of Caligula’s three sisters, who were all named in the reverse
legend: Agrippina, Drusilla, and Julia. This is quite a momentous depiction: it
was the first time any living woman had been depicted and identified on an
issue of Roman coinage. This was not, however, a case of happy families. After
Drusilla died in AD 38, Agrippina and Julia plotted with Marcus Aemilius
Lepidus to overthrow Caligula. The plot was foiled, Lepidus was executed, and
the two sisters were exiled.
.jpg) |
| Fig. 3: Roman provincial coin of Trajan |
The
coinage of the Roman empire was a very varied entity. Alongside the gold,
silver, and bronze coins struck at Rome, there existed a vast array of coins produced
by cities of the provinces. These coins, now commonly known as the Roman
provincial coinage, were principally made of bronze, and have legends written
in Greek. EC1493, struck in the city of Mytilene during the reign of Trajan (AD
98–117), is a good example (fig.
3). Roman provincial coins often combine local and imperial images. The
portrait on the obverse of this coin is identified in the legend as Dada, who
appears to be a mythical figure associated with Mytilene’s history, but she
appears with the features of Matidia, the wife of Trajan.
.jpg) |
| Fig. 4: Silver drachm of Trajan |
Not all
Roman provincial coins, however, were bronze. EC1494 (fig. 4) is an example of a silver drachm
from the reign of Trajan (AD 98–117) (a drachm was a Greek unit of value,
equivalent to one Roman denarius). There has been considerable debate about two
aspects of this coin type: the species of camel on the reverse and the place of
minting. The camel on the reverse is commonly linked to Trajan's creation of
the province of Arabia in AD 106, but if this is the case, we would expect to
see the one-humped camelus dromedarius (Arabian camel or dromedary), not
the two-humped camelus bactrianus (Bactrian camel). Indeed, many other
coins celebrating Trajan's new province of Arabia show a one-humped dromedary
(e.g. http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.2.tr.245).
So why do these coins show a Bactrian camel? Many different explanations have
been put forward without agreement: perhaps this coin was celebrating
long-distance trade with Bactria, perhaps the humps were simply an engraver's
mistake. The place of minting has also been much debated. The style of the
obverse dies is very similar to the style of dies used in Rome, but other
technical aspects of minting suggest production in Arabia. The most recent study of these
coins narrowly favoured production in Rome. Wherever they were minted, hoard
evidence shows that these coins circulated predominantly in the Levant.
.jpg) |
| Fig. 5: Billon tetradrachm of Numerian |
Unsurprisingly,
the Egypt Centre’s collections contain numerous Roman provincial coins from the
Roman province of Egypt. Egypt’s provincial coinage was a little different from
other provinces, firstly because the mint of Alexandria struck coins for the
entirety of the province, and secondly because most coins produced were not
made of bronze, but of debased silver, an alloy that we call billon. EC1540 (fig. 5) is an example of
a billon tetradrachm (four drachms) struck at Alexandria during the reign of
the short-lived emperor Numerian (AD 283–284). An interesting feature of the
Alexandrian provincial coinage is the inclusion of a regnal date. On this coin,
you can see the letters L B on the reverse. L is the Egyptian demotic symbol
for “year”, and B is the Greek numeral for 2. So this coin was struck during
the second year of Numerian’s reign, that is to say—because Egyptian years
began in August—between August 283 and August 284.
.jpg) |
| Fig. 6: Example of a brockage |
The
collection also includes a nice example of what might be termed a minting
mistake from antiquity. EC1526 is a type of coin that we call a brockage (fig. 6). You can see that
instead of having a normal reverse design, the reverse shows the same image as
the obverse, but mirrored and in incuse. This occurs because coins in antiquity
were struck between two engraved dies. Sometimes a coin would get stuck to the
upper die and not be removed before the next coin was struck. In this case, the
second coin would be imprinted with the proper obverse design from the lower
die, but the upper die would impart not the reverse design but an incuse of the
obverse from the stuck coin.
.jpg) |
| Fig. 7: Siver tetradrachm of Ptolemy I |
Although
all the examples above come from the Roman period, there are also some nice Greek
and Parthian coins in the collection. GR100 is a beautiful silver tetradrachm
of Ptolemy I, the first king of the Ptolemaic empire (fig. 7). This coin dates to 306 BC,
relatively early in Ptolemy’s reign, and the obverse shows Alexander the Great
wearing an elephant headdress, advertising Ptolemy’s connection with the great
conqueror. Later in his reign, Ptolemy’s coins would feature a portrait of
Ptolemy himself on the obverse.
Once all
the coins were catalogued, we wanted to make them more widely available to the
scholarly community. One great way to do this is to get them included in
various online numismatic portals. These portals typically host a standardised
typology, which can then list various specimens of each type, where the
specimens are hosted on the websites of individual museums. The two major
portals the Egypt Centre was able to contribute to were Online Coins of the Roman Empire
(OCRE) for Roman imperial coins, and Roman Provincial Coinage online
(RPC online) for Roman provincial coins. These portals are all
designed according to the principles of Linked Open Data,
which provides a stable format for referring to real-world concepts (like coin
denominations or Roman emperors) and makes it easy to connect the mass of
numismatic data available on the internet.
These portals
gather coins from many of the most important coin collections around the world,
and it is great to see the Egypt Centre’s coins alongside specimens from, for
example, the British Museum, the American Numismatic Society, and the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France. For example, on this type, the
Swansea coin finds its place alongside 180 other examples (as of 29/06/2022)
from museums right across the world. Sometimes, however, the Swansea coin
really stands out. For this denarius type
of Nerva, the Egypt Centre’s coin (fig. 8) is the only example of the type
that has been digitised. Therefore, whenever anyone searches online for an
image of this coin type, the Egypt Centre’s coin is the one they will come
across.
It has
been a lot of fun diving into the Egypt Centre’s coin collection, and I’d
encourage you to explore
the coin collection online, or maybe pop into the museum and ask Ken to
show you the coins themselves!
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
