I wonder if there is a chance to determine what this coin is ? Found in Israel . Thanks 0.7 gram / 16 mm
Gotta be medieval ...not that that narrows it down any, especially for the region. Wish I could begin to make sense of the central motif. If the legend to the left is reading vertically, that could be Some help. Some coins of the German states did things like that, along with Byzantines. (--Which it's not.)
Western European coins not only funded the crusades on a macro scale but travelled with the crusaders as personal funds. There are some western types that are more commonly found in the Holy Land others. Someone will surely know. If I were going to search, I would probably start with French Feudal of the earlier crusader period but that's only a semi-educated guess.
The weird part is that it doesn't resemble any French feudal or crusader type I have any recollection of. But @dltsrq's point is dead on; @seth77 just lately mentioned the profusion of French feudal coins that found their way to, and circulated in, the Crusader states. ...But I can't figure out what the obverse motif is. Even the reverse, with the annulets in each angle of the cross, is uncharacteristic of coins of either series. Why I'm thinking that maybe it's German, Italian, or (politically) a combination of the two. Whatever it is, this is Not among 'the usual suspects' for the milieu.
The crudeness of the flan, and the thick circle around the cross, strikes me as Norman/Normandy (although they tend to have pellets rather than annulets around the cross…). I’ll try to check Dumas tomorrow to see if the other side matches up to anything
Looks very German to me for some reason. My knowledge in coins older than the US is pretty fickle tho, so I'm probably wrong.
@FitzNigel, your first instincts were better; four pellets, Not annulets, are de rigueur for Norman issues, whether late 10th or early 12th century. Had the celators evolved all the way from pellets to annulets, Then, Just Maybe, they'd have been capable of legible legends. To paraphrase Burning Spear, 'Highly-I Unlikely-I.' ...If you're citing Dumas, Fecamp, it's like, Nope, nothing to see here. More impressionistically, this is looking more 12th than even 11th century. Along those lines, I'm seconding (....no comment: )@Bluntflame. As of now, no one who's posted here has better than an intelligent guess. Since seveal people --at least for any context involving non-Byzantine medievals-- have already done that much, I'm waiting for someone to weigh in who actually has the right (expletive of choice) book.
Not the fecamp horde, but Dumas, ‘Les Monnaies normandes’ from Revue Numismatique VI - XXI (1979). It does look a little bit like plate XIX no. 15 (which does have annulets), but I’m not entirely convinced.
@FitzNigel, Many thanks for that! It would be great to find out what chronological range she's referring to (thank you again, specifically in reference to the annulets).
This morning, I noticed one very similar in the current Zeus auction. Attribution (pasted from the listing): "Crusaders Coins Ar Silver, Circa 1095 - 1271 AD." Golly, Thanks, Zeus.
The Zeus coin has more readable legend R | O [...] | OM(?) [...] | [...] And it looks even more like a late Norman coin.
...Thanks, @seth77. Idm still frankly stumped by the annulets vs. pellets. Can you cite anything accessible online for that? ...Only a little more rhetorically, do you think anything approaching a comprehensive cataloguing of 11th-12th-c. Norman coins will be done in our lifetime?
See my above post. Seeing the Zeus example, it is DEFINITIVELY Dumas XIX-15. What’s weird, is that Dumas has it pictured upside-down!
Although now that I look at it, I’m not sure the Zeus coin and this one are the same… edit - never mind. I took another look, and I think they are the same