This one had me a little puzzled. I had the hardest time reading the MM. I think I got it SMANT Epsilon. I have been thru many sites @Victor_Clark site I looked twice and also found some great information. That's a wonderful addition to Wildwind's Thanks! It is the closest to RIC Vll Antioch 63 This one has a dot in the doorway. Constantine I A.D. 325- 326 Ӕ nummus 19x19mm 3.1g CONSTAN-TINVS AVG; diademed head right. PROVIDEN-TIAE AVGG; campgate, two turrets, no doors, star above, dot in doorway. In ex. SMANT Epsilon.
Yes, you have it right with Antioch 63. Lots of campgates have mystery dots. Sometimes these are left over from the engraving process and other times they were probably used as some sort of internal workshop control. Constantine is laureate on this issue though. I had the description listed on my page as diademed by mistake-- due to lazy copy and paste.
So, Victor were the dots used as a control of the die face? You said that dots appear in different areas of the die face. Where does the dot come from?
Dots serve a variety of uses. Sometimes they are used to show that there is a break between words-- the coin above has a dot on the reverse after BEAT. Then the engraver messed up and put a dot after TRAN which should not be separated from rest of the word TRANQVLITAS. sometimes the dot is merely a centering dot-- https://constantinethegreatcoins.com/dots/ sometimes there is a centering dot (arch above doorway) and another dot in bottom of doorway that is perhaps a separate issue or was used as an internal control over workshops to show which crew struck a coin with a particular die and a dot at the end of the mintmark. Sometimes a coin has a centering dot and an usually placed control or dot left over from the engraving process and the coin below also has another wrongly placed dot in the obverse legend. Constantine I A.D. 322- 323 Ӕ nummus 18x19mm 2.9g CONSTAN•TINVS AVG, laureate head right. D N CONSTANTINI MAX AVG, laurel wreath enclosing VOT XX •. In ex. S✶AR RIC VII Arles 252 Here's another with a centering dot on the reverse and errant dot to left of VOT and wrong dot in the obverse legend here's a dot in bottom of doorway and at end of mintmark and there are many more example...dots are complicated
Interesting seems like it was a lack of communication between the die Makers. Back in the day, this was one of the first ancients I bought. I think that this one is SMTS Epsilon. Could be an S
