Struck at Ake Ptolemais -Phoenicia under Ptolemy II, the following bronze drachm weighs 64.8 g. The historical city of Akko was basically located in Judaea, but Ptolemy annexed it to Phoenicia, the latter being also a Seleucid colony. I don't know for what reason or under which circumstances. The reverse looks superb with these two standing eagles, before them there's a circle including a monogram composed of the 2 letters T and Pi to indicate the mint. Sv.788- Series 3. Hope you like it.
This appears to be an extremely unfortunate example of hacking, carving, tooling, scraping, gouging, and near destruction of the reverse in an attempt to perhaps rescue something that was even worse before the ham-handed hack turned this into a textbook example of what no one should ever do to a coin. The monogram seems to be real so it is actually a the rare Ptolemais Series 3 bronze drachm (Sv 788) and the obverse is ok. The reverse, however is now just a fantasy of what a real one looks like. You can see one that has some wear but with its original appearance intact on ptolemybronze.com and images of it are attached here below. Too bad this rare coin was turned into such a catastrophic fantasy. The mean weight for these types is about 68.5 grams and the approximately 4 grams shortage on this one could well be missing metal that was removed by the hack's grinding wheels, chisels, and chain saw. As for the history, the entire Phoenician area was part of the Ptolemaic empire from the time of Ptolemy I through Ptolemy IV, the entire 3rd C. BC with mints making many bronze and silver coins at Sidon, Tyre, Ako, Joppa, Gaza, and perhaps a mint in what is now Jordan. Phoenicia wasn't regained by the Seleukids until a victory by Antiochos III over Ptolemy V in the 5th Syrian war about 197 BC. The war was partly settled Antiochos III marrying off his daughter, Cleopatra I, to Ptolemy V. The city of Ake exists to this day (as do Sidon, Tyre, etc.). Ake (aka Acre) is located on the Mediterranean coast in the northernmost part of Israel, just north of Haifa. You can see examples of most of the Ptolemaic bronze coin types of Phoenician mints on the ptolemybronze.com site. Certainly hope this carved up coin was super-cheap. PtolemAE
