[Ancients] Look what the Befana brought me...

Traditionally, the Epiphany is celebrated on January sixth to commemorate when the Wise men came. In Italy an old lady called the Befana comes and brings the children presents. Because my dad grew up in Italy we have the same tradition, however, we also get presents on Christmas, so generally the Bafana only brings small things.

It's a good holiday to have if you order your goodies too late...

So anyhow, this Epiphany I received this copy of Milne.




HALLELUIAH!!!!

 

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WOW! That is an awesome present! It's on my shopping list.

Maybe I'll skip buying it and just ask you to ID my coins

 

Gee, I need to start celebrating these holidays. In Germany there is "Three Kings Day", but we never got used to celebrating when we lived there.

 

That's a very cool present (I love Alexandrian coins!!)

=> I'm totally jealous

 

Use the book and tell us what you got out of it. What did you learn about this series as a whole or about the individual coins you own. I like book reviews.

 

I've only skimmed a bit and figured out how to use the attribution system, but I'll give it a try.

 

Well I finally got around to doing a book review, enjoy!

First impression: Milne did a very thorough job researching his work, it has an extensive "introduction", which is more a history of Egyptian coining tech, monetary history, and other useful things. One of the most interesting "useful things" are several pages on mintage figures, only instead of numbers he uses comparisons to the years before. Ingenious! For example:

"56. Philip The accession of Philip was followed by an expansion in the Alexandrian coinage : in the five months which made up his year 1 the total output was quite great as in the last seven months Gordianus III, and in year 2 the average of recent years was more than doubled : there was a slight fall in year 3, which was partly in year 4, and wholly so in years 5 and 6 : his year 7 was barly commenced at his death. In years 5 and 6 there was also an issue of bronze coins of the drachma size, which were probably metallic or commemorative in purpose, like those of Caracalla and Alexander, and not used for ordinary circulation."

So he has some good information, and put a fair amount of work in the process, but it takes careful reading to get the most out of Milne. If you have trouble with that, read this: http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-Touchstone/dp/0671212095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390245280&sr=8-1&keywords=how to read a book

Cataloging system: Milne organizes into family groups, in this case under Philip I and then categorizes using a very logical short hand. Beforehand (near the beginning of the book) a lowercase letter number combo is assigned to each bust type, bare head, mailed bust, ect. (This system is used regardless of ruler while the letter number combos are recycled.)

Next, a capital letter number combo is assigned to each legend of the main ruler.

Then combos are assigned to other members.



Finally you get to the listings, they start with the year (off picture to the left),
then the catalog number, denomination (if more than one denomination was issued tets are listed first), diameter, weight, obverse type/ruler (If no ruler is listed than it's assumed to be the Big Daddy, in this case Philip I.), reverse design (If no design is specified than it's assumed to be the one that was last listed.), and finally source.



My biggest peeve is that Milne lists the reverse types/descriptions with most of them not pictured in the index.

So I hope all of you enjoyed (and hopefully understood) my review.

Cheers!

 

BTW people I do highly recommend "How to Read a Book", it's top/hard stuff!

 

Ye gads!

 

Most large catalogs only include a sample of the types in the plates. I'm guessing that the job of securing the images and permission to use them would be overwhelming. If RIC was to include images of every type of Roman Imperial coin, you'd need another ten volumes and half a century to complete the task.

 

Oh. Yes, of course.

Now that I think about it, the few public domain catalogs I've browsed are like that.

Vlaha, since you seem to be most interested in Alexandrian coinage, are you conspiring to also get Emmett's book?

 

I'd be ok if he'd at least done a decent amount of plates, but there aren't. I mean, I at least need decent representation for some of the common types.

Nope, sorry. Emmett is a bit too expensive right now (I was recently offered a copy at $100), but tomorrow there's a copy of Curtis going in the mail with my name on it.

Yay!

 

Remember this was published in 1927. Photographic plates were expensive to produce. Even the finest sauction catalogues would only illustrate a handful of lots.

Overall, this is an exceptional work of scholarship that very clearly analyzes and describes the coins listed therein. I find the coded and method of describing the coins to be a bit difficult to work with, but I'm probably just spoiled by the well illustrated sylloge format - a method that would be less than ideal for presenting Alexandrian coins. Do be aware of the limitations of the volume, namely, that it only covers the coins held in the Ashmolean, many of which were donated by Milne himself.

The lead tokens are superbly presented. Milne is one of the few scholars to date to recognize that leaden issue could have functioned as coins. Thanks to him, this idea is widely accepted, but alas, only in relation to Egyptian issues.

If you are really interested in Alexandrian coins, you need to find yourself a copy of the complete plates to the Dattari collection. Over eleven thousand pieces, many of which are otherwise unknown, are presented in rubbings from the early 20th century. Pricey and difficult to use? Yup. Vast and indispensable? Even more so.

 

You've got a good point about the plates, I forgot about the cost.

I actually like the 'coded' system, it's a smart way to do it.

As for the lead tokens, Milne points out that Egypt was the emperor's turf, as it was mostly cut off from the rest of the empire. So I find it conceivable that the tokens (or most of them) were only used as money there, like what seems to be the case with other Egyptian coins (Milne theorizes this because at the time no major hoards had found outside of Egypt, but that 1927 so times might have changed.).

 

Wow vlaha and your only 14 years old....nice job..

 

14 and 8.6 months.

 

I do not own the book but had the great stroke of luck that you posted sample photos of the pages necessary to catalog my latest purchase. Considering the number of pages, that is a bit amazing. It illustrates a good point, IMHO. The seller of my coin listed it as a Milne 3503 (obverse B3) but your pages make me believe the correct answer is obverse A2 . The difference is the position of the obverse legend. I fail to find an A2 with this reverse so I really need to research this more. What this shows is that one should not quote catalog numbers (Milne or others) without actually looking at the book. I also should have researched this better before posting this which has required immediate updating after I read the coin more closely. I do not know whether the seller derived the number from some listing like Sear (he quoted a Sear number from Millenium volume 3 but I don't have it so I don't know) or if he looked it up in Milne and did not understand the system.

The fact is that my interest in Alexandrian Philip stops a bit short of caring where the legend break falls. I bid on the coin because I really liked the portrait style and have no idea if all A2 coins have this portrait or all LA (year one coins do). I agree with the opinion that such catalogs need to be fully illustrated and continue to value our 2014 era online photo resources very highly. It does bother me that it is easier to get 100 different photos of some rare coins than it is to find them of something like Alexandrian tets. Perhaps, in time, this will improve.
http://www.ebayitem.com/261371635623

I only have one other Philip tet but it is a C1 (thanks to your first image). Unfortunately you didn't show the year four listings. Can't win them all.

 

That's an interesting coincidence Doug, I picked that sample pages because they were used to identify my latest/only ancient buy!

I'll PM you the year four pages tomorrow.

You never know...

 

That is pretty darn fortuitous!

Sounds interesting. Since Alexandrians are also something I am starting to focus on, maybe I'll look for this. And Emmett's book. BTW, vlaha... not sure where you found that price but you can get a signed copy from the author for $55 US, postage paid.
http://www.coinsofromanegypt.org/html/topics/emmett.htm

 

A new collector of Alexandrian coins (certainly myself included) is faced with what seems like too great a selection of books. Here we have a review of Milne and mention that Dattari is more complete but has rubbings and is hard to use. Does Emmett or Curtis improve the situation with better and more plates or just add two different sets of numbers? The subject of Alexandrian from Augustus to Diocletian seems too large for one volume and many of the people I know who collect them specialize in either early or late making a multi volume set a better fit. Reviews of Emmett and Curtis will be appreciated.