My first Nero has arrived

I hope I’ve attributed it correctly. The ebay details were minimal but I felt comfortable enough to buy.

Nero & Augustus Billon Tetradrachm of Roman Alexandria.
Year 13 = 66-67 AD.
NEPW KLAV KAIS SEBA GEP, radiate bust left wearing aegis, date LIG to left
QEOS SEBASTOS, radiate head of Augustus right.
Köln 177, RPC 5294.

 

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Nice Tet of his. Always a fan of the dark toning.

 

Looks good. I like his tetradrachms.

John

 

Nice coin!

 

A small suggestion for your future posts: when you upload a picture, choose the "Full Image" option -- it's more convenient for the other collectors on this site who read your thread.

 

Great coin!

 

Thanks! Done and done.

 

Pleasant busts, nice catch on your first Nero

Q

 

Nice coin. I wonder why it was struck with Augustus on one side given that Nero and Augustus were about 50 years apart. Was it a kind of “restitution” issue honoring Augustus? Interesting pairing.

 

My first Nero was also an Egyptian Tet.

 

Nice!

 

Interesting question. I'd love to know the whys of coins design for so many emperors!

On his Egyptian coins Nero is paired with several emperors and empresses: Augustus, Octavia, Tiberius, Aggripina, Poppaea. As for showing Augustus, Octavia, and Tiberius, perhaps he wanted to drive home his "right" to the throne as a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, given the machinations Aggripina went through to get him there. Aggripina's appearance probably reflects her dominance in Nero's early life and early years as emperor.

 

I like it! Congrats!

 

Nice coin. I'd like to get a nice example of Nero someday, probably a sestertius.

 

There is a great website here that will allow you to convert Roman to Greek letters. Then you can copy and paste (and change a few back to Roman ones, such as V, C (lunate sigma) and L (for "year")) like so: ΝΕΡΩ ΚΛΑV ΚΑΙΣ ΣΕΒΑ ΓΕΡ; LΙΓ / ΘΕΟΣ ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ.

 

That item of the L standing for year (of regnal issue) is an abbreviated form of the letter, E, epsilon, the first letter of ETOUS, year.

 

We've had this discussion here before and that's probably not the derivation of this symbol.

 

My reference for this is the book, Coins and Archaeology by Lloyd R. Laing, Schocken Books, NYC, 1970 US Edition, page 21, on ancient coin chronology where he details the use of ETOYS (of the year) on Egyptian coins which is abbreviated to L the fragmentary of the initial letter E. If the reader is not familiar with professor Laing he was a lecturer in archaeology at the University of Liverpool, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians and fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society. In his lifetime he has directed many excavations. I have had this book for decades and have found it to be quite accurate when it comes to ancient and medieval numismatics. Thanks for the previous link to the present discussion but I think I will go with this book's explanation of the L as a short hand demotic for ETOYS. Remember that L is not a letter in the Greek alphabet so it is shorthand for something else, and a shortened letter E, easier to inscribe than the full letter and easier to place next to another letter seems to make good sense.

 

Nice coin. I'm starting to collect Alexandrian tets as a specialty. I'd like to get coins of each emperor/empress...and perhaps some Ptolemies. I've got about 15 Roman period tets so far.

 

Curious and confused by this statement that the book states:

I always thought Lamda was the Greek ‘L’ (Λλ).