Yesterday for at least one hour I thought I had discovered an unlisted drachm of Parthia in today's CNG auction (I was plotting to bid hundreds!). Probably a slightly barbaric type, but still, with picture of the sitting archer left instead of right. And that in a mid-first century BC drachm. Certainly, the archer looks a bit drunk and holding a mug of frothy beer, leaning his feet on a stool - thus barbaric - but still. The picture was not mirrored, for you can read the word DIKAIOU quite clearly just over the archer. So I went to do some research. In Sellwood: no mention of archers to the left. If you google "archer seated left" you find many web pages, but never a mid-first century Parthian drachm where the archer really is seated to the left. But the CNG description also mentions the A mark of Ecbatana ('Agbatana' being one of its other name forms), and that I could not find on the coin, unless the A was inverted. Inverted! So I inverted the reverse, and lo! there was the archer again sitting to the right, holding a bow, not a cup, and I was reminded of that old comic strip series, a great classic, of the Incredible Upside Downs, published in The New York Herald, 1903-1905.
I saw this coin. Very nice! Looks like a S48.7 from Ecbatana. Cheers to you and drunken seated archers everywhere!
Yes - in fact I have spent my dinero already a few weeks ago, on coins like this: It's an AR drachm of Persis, in fact contemporary with Orodes II, of king Vahsir (Oxathres), ca 50 BC.
This went completely over my head. What is unusual about this coin? Is it not usual for the bottom legend to be upside down?
The thing is, I didn't immediately see the reverse picture of the coin at CNG's was upside down (still is), and I thought I had found an unlisted drachm with left-looking archer. The sitting archer upside down here looks rather like a sitting man, too, only a bit slumped with his head forward, raising an arm. There's nothing wrong with the coin, but the designer of the coin unwittingly engraved an ambigram that upside down makes sense, too - like the Incredible Upside Downs, that brilliant American comic strip of 1903.
