Ancients => Tessera ... sweet, sweet Tessera (*tick*)

I should assemble a gallery of the coins I've lost to CNG user "Clio". To be fair, on many I was not the first underbidder... there were other last-minute bidders who were bested by him as well.

 

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... click on it for extra cool-factor (CLIO => KABOOOOOOOM)

 

Excuse the ignorant question from a coin gatherer: What was the original purpose/use of all those lead Egyptians?

For what its worth, my entire holding in lead is made up of a pair of Ikshvakus elephants. I assume they were used as money but I really do not know how to tell that or, for that matter, how to be sure how many of my copper coins might have been otherwise purposed. I have several US or UK tokens but they were emergency money when the government issue was insufficient to cover demand. We have had a few other uses like the WWII ration tokens, sales tax tokens and bus passes. In ancients, we have been told of admission tokens but I am unaware how we know what we, supposedly, know. Help, anyone?

 

... I don't know!!

 

.... oh, and obviously I'm telling the truth!!

=> but I'm betting that our caped crusader from CNG must know "something" ... otherwise, I'm selling my newest coin-addition!!

 

This is exactly the problem. Neither archaeological nor typological evidence bear out the theory. There isn't even any firm evidence that these are the "tesserae" briefly mentioned by Seutonius. I think there's a much stronger case to be made for these lead pieces as monetary tokens, in the vein of the US civil war tokens.

I'm on a tablet, so I can't type too much, but there's I have a better explanation in my article in the Leaden Token Telegraph.
http://www.mernick.org.uk/leadtokens/newsletters/LTT1311_93.pdf

Edit: rereading that, I pretty much didn't even touch on their purpose. I do have a little book coming out later this year that has a much better collector's introduction to tesserae.

 

I believe what worries me is that the mindset that requires metal of value in a coin to approximate the value of the coin in commerce would be hard pressed to accept a small scrap of inferior metal for real cash unless required to do so by the authorities. That would mean the coins should be marked as valued and official. This was the case when the US issued the first small copper cents to replace the obviously superior copper nickel cents which were better in metal than large cents so they could be smaller. Tokens, hard times or CW were just private versions of the real thing made just like the government issue. If the lead things were required substitutes for copper coins, I would expect something on them to suggest that failure to accept them would be against the emperor's orders. Therefore, if they are money, it would seem they might be small change. Was there need enough for circulating coin at a fraction of the smallest official coin?

Since the best answer seems to be "don't know" I have to wonder what could change that would clue us in on the secret. At least Egypt has a few million scraps of papyrus that could include a hint or two. Thanks for the link.

 

Cool new coin Steve, if you get tired of your coin you can punch a hole in it and use it for a fishing sinker!! Northern pike love griffins...