Un ripostiglio di tetradrammi alessandrini viene pubblicat

A. Cavagna

A. Savio

AIR Universita degli studi di Milano

1 Milne 1933, p. XXV.2 Christiansen 2004, p. 129.3 Geissen 1976, p. 282, note 10.4 Christiansen 2004, p. 129.5 Metcalf 1998, p. 273. 6 Estiot 1995, p. 100.7 Christiansen 2004, p. 129.8 With the exception of two coins of Diocletianus (nos. 63-64) and two of Maximianus (nos. 74 and 79) with the date off the  an.9 See the distribution by year and the comparison with the collections of Köln, Oxford and Osnabrück.AN ALLEGED HOARD OF THIRD CENTURY ALEXANDRIAN TETRADRACHMSADRIANO SAVIO / ALESSANDRO CAVAGNAIn the 1920s an Italian diplomat and spare-time collector of ancient coins bought a lot of third cen-tury Alexandrian tetradrachms in the Great Bazaar of Istanbul. He was told that it was an Egyptian  nd. This so-called discovery was forgotten for 50 years after the death of the diplomat until the last owner put it up for sale. Nevertheless, before selling it for good, he got in touch with us in order to be aware of its real value. Thus we had the chance to examine, weigh and take pictures of those coins, and it was immediately clear to us that we were dealing with a true hoard.In fact all the coins show the same patina in spite of different degrees of corrosion, and their quantitative analysis is more or less equivalent to the conjectural reconstruction which was made by Milne in 1933 in the introduction to his famous catalogue of the Ashmolean collection1 and which was later con rmed by Erik Christiansen in his work about The Hoard Evidence in 2004.2 For obvious reasons we cannot exclude that some coins too worn or completely illegible were dis-carded by the seller or by the collector, nor can we exclude the possibility that our supposed hoard may actually be only a part of a larger treasure. Nevertheless we are dealing with 214 specimens spanning the period between 272/273 AD, year 4 of Aurelianus’s principate, and 295/296 AD, year 12 of Diocletianus’s reign and virtually the last year of the autonomous Alexandrian mint that afterwards struck only the odd coins of the usurper Domitius Domitianus and perhaps some rare specimens of Maximianus and Constantius.3These coins were clearly hoarded as soon as the Diocletianic reform came into force, or to-gether with the coming into force of the Diocletianic reform when the tetradrachms were expelled from monetary circulation. According to Christiansen, ‘hoards… deposited after Diocletian’s cur-rency reform rarely contain any coinage from the previous period,4 and the composition pattern of our supposed  nd corroborates his observation. A total of 213 specimens were coined after the Aurelianic reform of the Alexandrian currency argued by Metcalf5 and accepted by Estiot6 and Christiansen,7 according to whom the weight of the tetradrachm was cut within year 5. The whole lot contains 214 clearly legible and easily datable8 specimens characterized by a brownish surface: 3 belong to Aurelianus, 1 to Probus, 3 to Carinus Caesar, 3 to Carinus, 6 to Numerianus, 107 to Diocletianus, 87 to Maximianus and 5 to Galerius Caesar.Between Aurelianus and Numerianus the weight is reduced from 10.6 g to 7.7 g; later, with Diocletian’s’  rst year, the average weight is reduced to c. 7.50 g, a stable standard more or less until year 9 of the Dalmatian emperor (Table 19); in fact with year 10 the average seems to be replaced by a lighter standard of c. 7 g, perhaps in connection with the lower weight of Gal-lienus’s tetradrachms. ADRIANO SAVIO / ALESSANDRO CAVAGNA100010 Milne 1933, p. XXV.11 Christiansen 2004, p. 129.12 See the the comparison with the collections of Köln, Oxford and Osnabrück.TABLE 1. Average weights of Diocletianic tetradrachms from the collections of Köln, Oxford and Osnabrück, and from the hoard under discussion.YEAR KÖLN OXFORD OSNABRÜCK HOARD1 7.78 7.85 7.73 7.582 7.47 7.76 7.56 7.533 7.60 7.63 7.80 7.364 7.35 7.41 7.64 7.625 7.38 7.78 7.57 7.356 7.80 7.30 7.69 7.417 7.71 7.57 7.62 7.578 7.42 7.54 7.22 7.509 7.28 7.32 7.33 7.2510 7.19 6.94 7.39 6.9011 7.30 7.21 7.25 7.0312 7.02 7.45 7.07 7.18In substance the most represented emperors are Diocletianus and Maximianus, whose tetradrachms respectively make up 50% and 40.65%, with the addition of the 1.86% of Galerius. The most productive years are the  rst eight, taking as reference the years of Diocletianus, with the peaks of the production within years 3 and 4.Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 Year 6 Year 7 Year 815 spec. 22 spec. 30 spec. 36 spec. 26 spec. 17 spec. 12 spec. 18 spec.This is in line with Milne’s10 observation that the  rst three years were marked by a more plentiful output compared to the predecessors, less in line with his following observation that the output fell slightly in each of the years 4, 5 and 6, but in line with the fall of 7 and the recovery in 8 conjectured by him.After the collapse, as argued by Milne and con rmed by Christiansen:11Year 9 Year 10 Year 11 Year 127 specimens 4 specimens 3 specimens 5 specimensYear 12 of Diocletianus is represented in our hoard only by two coins (Table 212) and the Alexandrian year 295/296 is represented by a total of five tetradrachms, not in line with AN ALLEGED HOARD OF THIRD CENTURY ALEXANDRIAN TETRADRACHMS 100113 Metcalf 1987, p. 16.14 Christiansen 2004, p. 129.15 According to Emmet 2001, pp. 208-209. According to Metcalf 1987, p. 160, the types would be 36 but the author reckons all the variants of the Milne’s catalogue.16 Christiansen 2004, p. 129. Recently the rule has also been cited for the coinage of the mint of Rome, see Guillemain 2009, p. 92.Metcalf,13 according to whom the output of tetradrachms in year 12 would be substantial, ‘in spite of the meagre representation in the hoards’.14TABLE 2. Coins of Diocletian year 12 (AD 295/296) in the collections of Köln, Oxford and Osnabrück, and from the hoard under discussion.KÖLN OXFORD OSNABRÜCK HOARDTotal specimens 15 (166) 49 (5244) 10 (149) 5 (198)DIOCLETIANVS 2 12 - 2MAXIMIANVS 4 14 4 2CONSTANTIVS 4 13 3 -GALERIVS 5 12 3 1In spite of the the production in year 12 of 25 reverse types,15 this con rms Christiansen’s rule of thumb that ‘high number of types will normally be an indication of a low production’.16 This is illustrated also in Fig. 1, where the black line corresponds to the output according to our hoard, the dashed line to the quantitative conjecture of Milne and the numbers to the numbers of types. In fact the sharp decline in the output after year 9 corresponds to an evident increase in the number of types. Fig. 1. Graph showing suggested output and number of reverse types for years 1-12 of Diocletianus.ADRIANO SAVIO / ALESSANDRO CAVAGNA100217 Christiansen 1985, pp. 172-76.Some hoards deposited after the Diocletianic reform show a composition pattern (but a different size) similar to the alleged hoard. Among the others can be quoted the Karanis hoards numbered in Christiansen’s work about the Alexandrian hoards17 as A 146, A 147, A 148, A149 and A 150 (Table 3). TABLE 3. Composition of the Karanis hoards and the hoard under discussion.A 146617+145*A 1471010+476*A 1481021+468*A 1492728+162*A 1501418+98*HOARD214AurelianusPre-reform- 0.1 - 0.12 - 0.46AurelianusPost-reform0.48 0.2 0.2 0.36 0.42 0.93Tacitus 0.16 - 0.1 0.16 0.49 -Probus 9.28 6.1 10.5 7.16 7.49 0.46Carus and sons12.64 13.1 14.7 14.04 10.36 5.60Tetrarchy 76.16 81.5 76.6 89.44 80.50 92.52* Illegible coins.Among the reverse personi cations, Nike (designed in various types) appears 40 times, fol-lowed by the Eagle (also with different types), and by Elpis, each 24 times; after these three come Tyche standing (20), Eirene standing and Homonoia standing (14), Alexandria standing (12), and Eusebeia standing (10).ABBREVIATIONSKÖLN = Geissen A. / Weiser W. (1983), Katalog alexandrinischer Kaisermünzen der Sammlung des Instituts für Altertumskunde der Universitàt zu Köln, Band 4, Claudius Gothicus –Bleimünzen (Nr. 3015-3627), Opladen.OSNABRÜCK = Savio A. / Cubelli V. / Lucchelli T. (1997), Katalog der alexandrinischen Münzen der Sammlung Dr. Christian Friedrich August Schledehaus im Kulturgeschichtlichen Museum Os-nabrück, III, Die Münzen des 3. Jahrhunderts (Septimius Severus-Domitius Domitianus), Bramsche.OXFORD = Milne J.G. (1933), Catalogue of Alexandrian Coins (Catalogue), Oxford.AN ALLEGED HOARD OF THIRD CENTURY ALEXANDRIAN TETRADRACHMS 1003BIBLIOGRAPHYChristiansen E. (1985), ‘The Roman coins of Alexandria (30 B.C. to A.D. 296). An inventory of hoards’, in: Coin Hoards VII, pp. 77-140.Christiansen E. (2004), Coinage in Roman Egypt. The Hoard Evidence, Aarhus.Emmet K. (2001), Alexandrian Coins, Lodi (Wisconsin).Estiot S. (1995), Ripostiglio della Venera. Nuovo catalogo illustrato, II/1, Aureliano, Roma.Geissen A. (1976), ‘Numismatische Bemerkung zu dem Aufstand des L. Domitius Domitianus’, ZPE 22, pp. 280-86.Guillemain, J. (2009), Ripostiglio della Venera. Nuovo catalogo illustrato, III, I, La monetazione di Probo a Roma (276-282 d.C.), Roma.Metcalf W.E. (1998), ‘Aurelian’s reform at Alexandria’, in: Ashton, R. / Hurter, S. (eds.), Studies in Greek Numismatics in Memory of Martin Jessop Price, London, pp. 269-76.Metcalf W.E. (1987), ‘From Greek to Latin currency in third-century Egypt’, in: Huvelin, H. / Christol, M. / Gautier, G. (eds.), Mélanges de Numismatique offerts a Pierre Bastien, Wetteren, pp. 157-68.Milne J.G. (1933), Catalogue of Alexandrian Coins (Introduction), Oxford.Savio, A. (2007), Tetradrammi alessandrini, Milano.

An alleged hoard of third century Alexandrian tetradrachms

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An alleged hoard of third century Alexandrian tetradrachms

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