I came across this interesting paper comparing/contrasting the drachms of Alexandria with the Roman sestertius. One of the conclusions of the article is that the sestertius influenced the production of large bronze coins by the Alexandrian mint.
I'm looking forward to carefully reading this paper but at a very brief skim I have a some questions. The first part of the paper touts a newly discovered bronze coin of Augustus which is sestertius-sized and attributed to Alexandria. What evidence does the author have that the Augustus "discovery coin" was indeed struck in Alexandria? It doesn't particularly resemble any other coins of that time, or of any other time, in Roman Egypt's coinage history. Perhaps he convincingly explains the attribution somewhere in the paper. I will be on the lookout for such an explanation when I read the paper this weekend. Here's the coin. AE 35mm, 34.30g; ΣΕΒΑ-ΣΤΟΣ; bare head of Augustus right / ΚΑΙ-ΣAP in two lines within laurel wreath. Here's something else that is baffling. There is a footnote on the title of the paper. The footnote is: Did I miss something? What does Silvia Hurter have to do with the title, or anything about this essay? Hopefully this too will be clear once I've carefully read the paper, but it seems very odd. Was he trying to thank her and forgot to actually thank her? Was this paper published in another language and poorly translated, leading to this weird or maybe incomplete comment? ... The idea that drachms of Roman Egypt were influenced by the Imperial sestertius seems likely-- perhaps obvious-- and I'm interested to see what evidence he has that the discovery coin is from Alexandria and why it serves to further his theory. Does the addition of this discovery coin enhance the theory in any way?
He means she wasn’t particularly interested in coinage from Alexandria, but she was enthusiastic about all ancient coins so it is ok for him to write about it. Often times if a volume is dedicated to someone (like a festschrift) the essays have to do with the honoree’s area of interest or expertise.
The Ptolemies had been issuing large bronzes for centuries. It need not have been the Roman Imperial sestertius that was the model for their large bronze drachmas.
That's true. In some sense, the bronze coinage of Roman Egypt was a continuation of the Ptolemaic monetary system. However, the bronze issues were discontinued for the most part after the reign of Commodus because of the continued debasement of the billon tetradrachm, leaving no need for the fractional bronze denominations.
I see nothing about the coin that makes me think of Alexandria. I don't usually download links so will be interested in hearing if you see a good reason not to call the coin Syrian from the material presented. I do see the possibility of a good study contrasting 1st century Roman sestertii with Provincial bronzes of similar size in general. I have zero knowledge and great confusion when it comes to the transition at Alexandria from the period where '80 drachmas' was the large bronze but 'diobol' size and the start of what I would call sestertius size AE coins of the later fabric. The first think I would look for in reading an unknown paper is evidence that we are all using the same definitions and are aware of the cities and coins already known.
