The face on obverse of this Roman coin seems strange to me. The reverse looks even stranger. It weighs 7.93 g. Please post your comments. Thanks..
You know it's a provincial, right? Portraits on Roman provincial coins often look very different than the imperial counterparts. The emperor's name is on the obverse, in Greek, and the location of issue is likely on the reverse. If you get stuck figuring it out from there, let me know Oh--and once again, images taken with your new camera would make it much easier for me/us to help you with these ID requests.
All I can see in exergue is OL. The Greek letters are not all visible to me . Even in Latin, one can be confused sometimes. Before posting this coin I identified 4 others I have newly acquired. What's wrong with seeking some contribution or help from coin friends on Saturday night? LOL..
On more Provincials than not, you need to start by identifying or ignoring the titles at the start. Common are AVT for Autocrator and K for Caesar. Next expect the ruler's name often starting with a praenomen letter like M for Marcus and a family name like IOV for Julius. Finally you get to the meat of the matter which on your coin starts right above the head. The reverse sometimes starts with the city name but often has a magistrate name first so you need to start reading in the middle somewhere which in this case falls around 2 o'clock. Having a guess on the who and where will allow you to search a site like acsearch or CNG for similar coins but failing to find a match that way is more than a real possilility. I failed on this one. Maybe having the coin in hand will help you do better.
I wasn't being critical, please don't be offended . I was just asking to see how far you had gotten with this coin and to see what degree of help you wanted. But, pictures taken with your new camera would definitely help. Your last few shots taken with that camera were great! Please use it more often.
On the reverse I can see the beginning of the legend, "ΦΙΛΟΜ...", so the city is Philomelium (also spelled Philomelion) in Phrygia. As for the emperor, I can't make out enough of the letters to tell. Trajan Decius issued the type (River-god Gallos reclining left, holding cornucopia and reed) but that's not his obverse legend. You might want to check other emperors around that time. You may have to dig through public domain references if you don't see a likely match in Wildwinds, CNG's archives, etc. A good way to do that is to find a similar coin in CNG's archives, note the cited reference, and then Google to see if you can view a copy of that book online.
I'm the opposite of an expert so I can't give you any insight other than to say it's provincial and eastern, as others have already confirmed. I am commenting mostly to say that I really, really like this coin. Very cool. I wonder what the river god is holding and leaning on?
I believe TIF was right about Philomelium and I also believe I gave away the obverse when I suggested you look after the M IOV. The most clear letters on the coin is the Phi iota lambda iota found there. No one else sees this a Philip I? I agree that there is no specimen on CNG or acsearch but we really have to get over the expectation that every coin will be found in your common catalogs. Big dealers are not likely to have such low end coins in their high ends sales so you are less likely to find exact matches for minor denominations. You asked for comments: I see this as a nice enough coin. Who knows it might be as nice as any like it that survived. It could be the only one that survived but before we say that we should check the best available specialist reverences. best hope would be RPC online but volume VIII is not available yet. http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/search/a...d=&d2=&w=&w2=&s=&stype=advanced&search=Search They have seven of the Decius version of the coin so it is not unreasonable to expect a Philip but that is a question for specialists. Perhaps it would be worth writing to whoever is working on RPC VIII. You might inquire of one of the authors of volume IX and see who might be interested in knowing the coin exists or find out that they have a crate of them in the back room (highly unlikely). Certainly there is a chance they will ignore you because you coin is in a volume no one cares about but you can try. Before you do any of that, get the best photo you can. Like she said... I know you think we are unreasonable but asking help with that scan is asking us to do this with mud on our glasses. You have seen the coin. We have not. Help us help you.
Greetings. I managed to shoot 4 coins in order not to take long time every thread. Here's first the concerned coin that I believe it represents Emperor Philip II. There's also river god Gallos on reverse. The coin, this way, is not listed on Wildwinds. I look forward to check where it could be listed. I sincerely appreciate all the info you provided for me so far, and which led me to Philip II and Philomelion as mint city. LOL all the way..
Thanks for the better images. [I edited this post extensively because of multiple mistakes ] As Doug pointed out, the visible Φ on the obverse narrows it down to Philip I or Philip II. The obverse legend is clear except for one or two letters, which can be inferred: The next step if you are unable to find it in the usual and easily searched databases (and there is an example in acsearch, with a slightly different obverse legend)), is to note the references given in similar listings and see if you can find an online version of that book. In this case, I wasn't able to find the SNG volumes so I looked in other resources. For instance, this is a handy page with links to some BMC volumes: http://www.ancientgreekandromancoins.com/ Luckly, Phrygia is among the online volumes. Following that link and then looking through it's table of contents, a coin very similar to yours is found: Unless later scholarship has come to light, your coin is probably Philip I. The reference cited above is BMC 25, Phrygia 32, or it is similar to it. There are some letters absent in the obverse legend (the name Julius is more fully spelled in the BMC citation). Off the top of my head I don't remember what some of the usual abbreviations are. I think it is possible that your coin is Philip II but I just don't know.
It's definitely Philip I, and SNGCop655. Cant find my vonAulock (I dont use it often and I think buried in a closet).
Parsing the obverse legend, here's my best guess about the breakdown of your coin's obverse legend: AVT(OKPATΩP) K(AICAP) M(APKOC) IOV(ΛIOC) ΦΙΛIΠΠΟC CE(BACTOC)) Imperator Caesar Marcus Julius Philippus Augustus [this post was also corrected]
Thanks a lot all of you . @TIF The letter A you see in Filianoc on obverse is likely to be a Greek P(PI). The same applies to the following letter N in Filianoc. So we have a double Greek Pi. I noticed that in many other coins of Philip where they write P like an A or even more commonly like a Delta resembling a quadrilateral.
Yes, you're right. ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟC CE. I guess my brain took a little vacation as I was editing that picture and writing that post
Seems to be some confusion on the legend. I cant figure out how to do Greek on the reply (someone please explain it), but it is: AV K M IOV FILIPPOC CEB FILOMHLEWV EPI MAPKOV NESTOPRC
