Siculo-Punic Horse Galloping Type Writeup -> little bit of my resent research

First, the two coins I will be describing.

First, My Favorite Coin...

A Beautiful Carthage AE17!



[TABLE="class: cms_table_tableb, width: 100%"]

Carthage
Siculo-Punic Mint
370-325BC
Wreathed head of Tanit left
Horse galloping right
17mm, 5.5 grams
gVF
Sassari 56-136, Holleman Munten List 106
Beautiful Green Patina
​

[/TABLE]

One of the best of this type... period!


Second, a coin from Gitbud Naumann.
- No Permission... Yet
- I am going to email them to see if I can use them for research

Carthage AE11



[TABLE="class: cms_table_tableb, width: 100%"]

Carthage
Siculo-Punic Mint
370-325BC
Head of Tanit left
Horse galloping right
11mm, 2.6 grams
VF - Minor Damage
Sassari 56-136, Holleman Munten List 106
​

[/TABLE]

From: http://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/git...of_tanitpersephone__horse/141135/Default.aspx.


Now, my writeup.
Both coins share the shame time period, mint place, definition, and catalog number, as shown by the table.

[TABLE="class: cms_table_tableb, width: 100%"]

Carthage
Siculo-Punic Mint
370-325BC
Head of Tanit left
Horse galloping right
Sassari 56-136, Holleman Munten List 106
​

[/TABLE]

However, I believe that both of these references are taking two or three types and making it to one type.

The first coin is what I would define as the first type:

Corn Wreathed Head of Tanit-Persephone

The second coin is what I would define as the second type:

Head of Trittolemo

The third type is those whose style, corrosion or wear means you can't tell which it is.

Most of these coins are of the last type, as this series is normally G to F... even aVF isn't common.


Just a little of what I have researched so far...

The next one may be about the mints of the Carthaginians... depends what I research in the time between.

 

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What makes you say that the second bust is of Triptolemus?

 

It says Tanit- Trittolemo on Magna Graecia, which has the catalog numbers (best online source for Carthaginian coins)

Also, Trittolemo works for the History, as Persephone-Tanit was the 'milk-sister' of Trittolemo

 

Just a footnote. I don't know anything about these coins, but I do know horses don't "gallop" like that. The thing is, nobody really knew that until the advent of photography and motion pictures. That's why you see this gait repeated, century-after-century, in paintings and on coins. Sorry if I'm intruding.

PS: You had "horse" in the title, what did I know?

 

:thumb:

Interesting...

I didn't know that

Apparently, there is another type of leg that is lumped into this type...

However, I have yet to find an example of this, so I can't post this yet.

ff-topic:

But just this part!

This is just the type of post I want...

More information on the coin... this one specifically about the Art!

 

I have a coin of similar typology and roughly of the same era from Macedon. I'm assuming the Carthaginians modeled some of their coins after the Greeks in this respect. The horse even has the same artificial gate, but I do have to wonder if that's more an issue of stylization than ignorance of equine motion. The horse looks more like he's rearing than running.

​

 

I would never call the pose shown 'galloping'. The horse appears to be rearing up with both rear feet on the ground and both fronts off. The photography reference was a bet in the 1870's settled by photographer Eadweard Muybridge as to whether a running horse ever had all four feet off of the ground. He set up a series of cameras tripped by threads that shot the horse as it passed and established that the old rocking horse view of horses used before that time was never a pose achieved by real horses. Muybridge later shot all sorts of animals in this same way producing a book Animal Locomotion and a book of people doing various things called Human Figure in Motion. The amazing thing about these books is just how many things he thought to include (I believe there was a man carrying bricks up a ladder). The books became great sourcebooks for artists wishing to have natural poses of moving, living things. One form or another of his images have remained in print for all these years but the original volumes with tipped in photos are very collectable and expensive now.

https://www.google.com/search?q=muy...ICIizyAHG4oGgDQ&ved=0CDwQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=583

Muybridge was a very interesting man with great landscape photos from his early days and his motion studies placing him firmly as a father of the motion picture. In his spare time, he was acquitted of the shooting at point blank range a man he believed fathered his wife's child (justifiable homicide after the insanity defense failed).

To the best of my knowledge, he never shot a coin photograph making this post wholly inappropriate. My apologies.

 

Here is one of Muybridge's series of pictures animated:

 

Totally appropriate post Doug....

I was a little busy (I finished this near midnight and I'm at school now) to write my opinions on the horse.

My opinion on this is that the horse is either Prancing, Jumping or Rearing....

I'll fill this out later (after school)

I believe that the Macedonian coins were not related to the Carthaginians issues...

In my opinion, the first die cutters of this issue were Greek, as the style can be very nice, but is normally not very good.

In my eye, this means that they started with very good die cutters, and as they had just taken a few Sicilian Greek cities at the start of this time period (the Sicilian Wars period)

Covered Above.

 

Thank you.

Really, ancients are a fascinating part of the hobby. They're fascinating coins, with real history behind them. I'm not a collector of these, per se, but I know how to appreciate a good coin when I see it, and its description.

Let me just leave you with the old, very nice!

 

More of the same.

 

What is the one on the bottom left?

And Thanks to Ripley, I'll be able to explain the horses later... :thumb:

:angelic2:

 

That one is from Thracian, Maroneia circa 400-350 BC. BMC 67

 

Ripley, can you post a bigger picture of the top coin?

Once that is done, I will post my writeup on the reverses... Then I will put them together to make an article from this thread and post it

 

Here is a horse, trottin' (slackin' off) ...





=> and here is a horse that means business!! (yaw mule, yaw!!)

 

MAA lists this coin as struck at Carthage, circa 400-350. He notes units, halves, and quarters struck in with globular or bevelled flans.

What in the iconography of the second "type" suggests to you an attribution of the figure as Triptolemos?

 

Where did you say you grew up (or didn't)?

 

*that's Manitoba foreplay*

 

As requested. :smile

 

This type is normally assigned as Siculo-Punic...

It does have units, halves and quarters, but that is to be another post.

Magna Graecia puts the second "type" as Tripolemos (with a question mark... so I used their attribution as I haven't got a reference book yet [from what I've seen, the most common attribution is that of Magna Graecia])...

My thoughts on their reasoning as the female figure is thought to be Tanit, 'milk-sister' of Tripolemos, it would make sense for the male to be him.