Roman Imperial, Domitian (81 AD) AE Sestertius, Rome mint Obverse: IMP CAES DIVI VESP F DOMITIAN AVG P M, Laureate head right. Reverse: TR P COS VII DES VIII P P S-C, Minerva standing right, brandishing spear and holding round shield. Reference: RIC 76, Cohen 561, Sear 2778 https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5649&pos=3 When I started collecting, I began with Roman Imperial coins and I ID'd each one just like this Domitian Sestertius. Eventually I started collecting every ancient coin within my budget and those that don't have Latin legend inscriptions. When I was working on my ancient coin photo galleries, I wanted to ID other coins in the same way. It took me awhile but here are the results. I posted images for those coins with ancient writing systems because Unicode for other languages has been disabled here or something similar to that. This way, all the letter characters can be seen without needing any fonts. However, I will post a link to each one at my Forum Ancient Coin gallery. If you have the fonts, you will see these characters. Reading Roman Imperial coins can also be tough until you learn how. One thing that makes it easier to understand is that late Roman Imperial coins have propaganda inscription messages. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/reading-roman.html Believe it or not there is a lot to be discovered by reading coins. Such as Nabataean coins that have quite a few words and names on the coins. A list has been made of these words which is quite a lot larger than when I started working on this project. This is how these coins can help increase the understanding of the Nabataean language. I made a page for it here http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/reading-nabataean-1.html Here is a bilingual coin with ancient Greek on the obverse and Kharosthi on the reverse. https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5706&pos=0 https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5678&pos=3 Here is a coin with Paleo-Hebrew that is part of the early Phoenician alphabet. Chinese https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5679&pos=2 Sasanian which uses Pahlavi. https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5680&pos=0 Here is Arabic. https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5680&pos=1
Very cool writeup and coins, @Gil-galad. From here, your emphasis on the legends couldn't resonate more. I mostly collect medieval (very much as a generalist, but mostly c. later Carolingian -mid-13th century), but bilingual legends always make me sit up in my chair.
I'm glad you like it, thanks so much. I also somewhat support Medieval coins as well because they have Latin and some Greek letters. And I know that some Medieval coins have Runic. I made this keyboard to help me ID coins and that's what I used for those coins. It's called Ancient Coin Visual Keyboard. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/AC-VK-Greek-Latin.html http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ancientwhitesheet/AC-VK-Runic-Latin-Greek.html It takes some time to learn how to use it. At the top is basic instructions on how to use it and where to find and download the needed fonts. At the bottom are links to other ancient languages, such as Runic. The first is a Greek-Latin keyboard with numbers. That should help for Medieval coins.
Massive, Massive thanks for the links!!! A quick perusal was enough to establish how fantastic this is. You can (as in, better) believe I bookmarked it. ...Right, I want All of it: Hebrew, Arabic, Ge'ez, Pahlavi, medieval Armenian, The Whole (minor expletive)-load. Spending some time with this would help me to get better acquainted with the alphabets in the first place. Fantastic work!!!!
Fantastic coin Gil-galad and informative write up, to add to your thread that may be of interest is my Domitian coin minted as a restoration issue for Claudius around the same time and note the resemblance of Minerva reverse. Claudius Claudius Restoration issued under Domitian AE AS, Rome Mint, Ca. 81-82 AD Wt.: 9.6 g
Definitely a nice coin. I think I'll look around for a coin like it later on. Yes, the Minerva looks very similar between both issues. There was a debate awhile back about what "REST" means, as it's unclear either as RESTORATION or RESTITUTION.
