A very short tale of transformation - from a Pharaonic Kingdom Owl to a fourrée Owl

Back in November 2018, I purchased an imitative owl from Ars Coins of Vienna, via MA Shops. The coin was described as a Pharaonic Kingdom imitation, I assume based on its weight. The style of this coin is very Athenian in nature.

Here's the description on MA Shops:

Grade: XF
Catalog: Van Alfen, Mechanisms, Group III.A.1
Material: Silver
Weight: 14.79 g
Diameter: 22.50 mm
EGYPT, Pharaonic Kingdom. Uncertain pharaohs. 450-350 BC. AR Tetradrachm. 22.5 mm - 14.79 gr, 8h. Imitating Athens. O: Helmeted head of Athena right, with frontal eye. R: Owl standing right, head facing; olive sprig and crescent to left; all within incuse square. Van Alfen, Mechanisms, Group III.A.1, Fig. 1 = Buttrey Type B. XF

And the photo:




Last month I removed the coin from the safety flip. Upon examining the reverse I was a nice case of bronze disease setting in along the edge of the owl's wing, along with smaller patches near the leaves and head. I've never seen light, green powdery buildups before on an assumed solid silver coin. I've seen it occurring on billon coins and of course bronze and brass coins, but never on a supposedly solid silver coin.

So, I cleaned the areas with distilled water and washing soda, letting the coin soak for several hours.

Here is the coin now. The treatment did not affect the weight, at least based on my cheap scale, which registers the coin at 14.8 grams.



I think the coin has been neutralized chemically and the bronze disease is no more. The corrosion did cause some loss of the thin silver plating in adjacent areas. I do have the coin out for monitoring for the next several months.

Normally I would have altered Ars Coins about this situation, but I have not, so far.

Given the style of this Owl, I think there's a pretty good chance that it is one of the official Athenian emergency Owls produced near the end of the Peloponnesian War, in 406/5 BC, based on the style and execution of the dies.

Any thoughts?

Are there other coins that you have that started out as one type but revealed their true identities years later?

Thanks

 

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My 2 cents: Unless it's a die match for one of the fourrées from the Piraeus hoard, I don't think it's very likely to be one of the emergency issues. The style doesn't really match the Piraeus coins either IMO. If it were me I'd definitely raise the issue with Ars Coins. That said, you are more of an expert on this series than I am!

 

There seems to be good money in selling fourrees of every type as possibly or definitely from the Emergency usually by sellers who have never heard of Piraeus. I might not be expert on which styles qualify and which do not. I know with no doubt that mine is not (style too early). I found it interesting because it weighs 16.5g which would fool people weighing the coins unless it struck them as strange that the thing is several millimeters greater in diameter than your average Classical owl. I paid too much to a big name seller now out of business (no tears lost here).


BTW, Sev, I am glad to see that your SA dupondius is still wearing a mask even though some governments are loosening restrictions on coin purse gatherings under a denarius in value. It is a little known fact that bronze coins are effectively protected from bronze disease by certified masks.

 

And it is certainly not “XF.”
Get your money back!!!!

 

Yes indeed... sadly my province hasn't yet released vaccine for those in the 1700 yrs + age group!

Here's a naughty flash w/o mask just for you:

 

Spicy. This needs to be marked NSFW

 

You could very well be correct. I've read, from different sources, that the only way to validate whether a plated owl is through die match with know examples. On the other hand, other numismatists, such as Reid Goldsborough, seem to emphasize examining the style of the coin. I have seen some plated Owls being offered or sold as official emergency coin, from Athens, when they are clearly not, usually due to the fabric of the design (such as intermediate Owl style), or just being totally off base in design and general appearance.

These emergency Owls had to pass muster with the public. In order to do that they needed to be reasonably close in the look and feel, albeit quite light weight, to the Owls that were circulating for the previous decades.

For those interested in Reid's discussion about plated Owls, here's a link:

http://rg.ancients.info/owls/fourrees.html

One interesting theory that Reid puts forth is that the plated Owls were intended for domestic use, during those final desperate years of Athens near the closing of the Peloponnesian War, while the fuller weight Owls were intended for commerce outside Athens.

In a sense, as Reid suggests, the plated Owls served as a fiduciary currency; plated Owls could eventually be redeemed by the State for full silver Owls at some later date.

As for Ars Coins, yes, they should be notified, and I intend to that some time this week.

 

Yes, there was some "grade inflation" on the part of Ars, but I am more interested in determining whether or not this con came from Athens or someone's garage.

The detail of the coin is mushy, but that is often the case with these coins. They are not razor-sharp in detail when compared to well struck, legitimate Owls.

 

Ars Coin 'XF' Wien as I like to call them. They haven't yet realised that if everything is XF, nothing is.

Hopefully you've nipped the bronze disease in the bud, and I hope you have a satisfactory resolution robinjojo, you've not had the best luck in recent weeks.

 

You know the saying, "you break it, you bought it"

The problem is that you soaked this coin and now more of the core is visible.

Even in the original photo, you can see some of the bronze and a little green (maybe only verdigris). Over two years later it developed BD...rhetorical question-- is this the fault of Ars?

 

That's a good point, Victor. I did contact Ars regarding this coin and today I sent them the photo.

I am not sure if soaking the coin to remove the corrosion is necessarily "breaking" the coin. This was a procedure that needed to be done to stop the corrosion process and stabilize the surface. Not doing this would probably result in further bronze disease, as I see it.

Max, from Ars graciously responded today enquiring what I would like to do. I am still considering what, if anything, would be fair.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

 

Looking into the stylistic features further, I think there is some chance that yours is an emergency issue, although not enough of a chance to warrant the price you paid. There are other fourrées in similar style that have sold at auction relatively recently for under $150 including fees. So I would suggest figuring out an appropriate retail price for the coin (160 EUR?) and asking the dealer to refund you the difference.

 

This is mine. it was bought at a very reputable coin auction so i know its real but there was Absolutly no description other than the weight and size.Weight:14.34gr
Dimention:23.40mm

 

This is another fourrée. Its weight is 17.27 g : precisely the Attic standard.
It cannot be an emergency coin of the 400s BC. Athena's eye is seen from profile, the flan is folded, the A of the reverse legend is under the owl's cheek. According to Kroll's chronology, it must have been made c. 353 BC.

The obverse side literally exploded, exposing a reddish core I did not analyse. I'm sure, that's not silver. The cause of the explosion may have been the coin submitted to a high temperature, for it was in a hoard kept in a pottery inside a burned building. The core may have had a higher dilatation coefficient than the silver covering.



Athens or imitation? Fourrée tetradrachm, 17.27 g.

 

That's a great example! I find fourrée coins fascinating and a world of their own. Is your coin an imitation or a fourrée? I think it is both. The vast number of fourrée owls were privately made, as far as I know, with the exception of the plated owls produced by Athens 406-404 BC. I have seen plated owls being sold as Athenian in origin. I don't think that is the case though. Unless there's a die match with a documented plated Athenian owl, and there is none for the OP coin, then it was produced elsewhere, probably privately. Still, these are highly collectable coins.

Here's my fourrée core owl, with only traces of the silver plating surviving. This coin came to me from Israel, in 2019, highly encrusted, probably a local find, West Bank?

This coin is based on the intermediate style owls of the 4th century. The green sub-layer used to bind the silver plating to the copper core can still be seen in places.




Now, there are instances where I think a coin is called a fourrée when in fact it is not. I believe this is an example. This is a coin that was listed at auction as a fourrée, no doubt due to the breaks on the surface and brown and to a lesser degree green deposits. However the breaks reveal silver beneath them on the obverse. I think these are laminations, separations of the surface metal from the core that can occur during the minting process (poor mixture of the alloy or low sliver content resulting in variations in hardness) during circulation causing metal to chip from the surface or by storage, where environmental factors (soil, water, air) acted on the obverse to cause the metal to become brittle and separate from the underlying core. This last consideration is almost certainly the cause for plating to separate from copper cores in fourrée owls.

So, what we could have here is an imitation owl with obverse laminations, along with brown and green deposits caused by environmental conditions occurring during burial.

15.7 grams

 

Israel is the only place in the Near-East where the antiquities market is officially legal, even if there have been more restrictive regulations lately. So, it draws portable antiquities and coins from the whole region: West Bank and Gaza Strip, of course, but also Jordan and Syria, probably Lebanon and Saudi Arabia too, and... Israel.

Your not-so-fourrée tetradrachm is very interesting. It is obviously an imitation, struck from a worn obverse die and a relatively fresh reverse die. The reverse imitates Pi III tetradrachms, same style, but the die cutter forgot the crescent. The obverse does not look like a Pi III tet at all : Athena's eye is seen from front, the hairdo is bizarre, the whole style is very unathenian. The weight is very light : 15.7 grams... A Greek trader would never had accepted it. Too bad the finding place is unknown...

Here is an example of these Pi III tets struck on folded flans.I think this one must be bona fide Athenian.

 

I noticed, in October of 2022, a group of owls, virtually all pharaonic from Syria offered on eBay by a couple of Israeli sellers. They all are pretty high grade and patterned from the classical design. In terms of weight they range from around 16.5 grams to slightly over 17 grams. So, I purchased some of the groups. I have 33 of them which I hope to photograph, attribute by Buttrey style, weight analysis, reverse rotation and stylistic variations. It's a pretty tall order for me, since I become more sloth-like as I age. I'm keeping the group intact and have created separate labels for them.

Here are 13 of them in a dealer's photo. Were you able to acquire some of them?

 

Wow...
That's interesting indeed. You say they are all from Syria and almost all are Buttrey (or Buttrey-Flament) types? It's obviously a hoard, and it would be good to know if it was actually from Syria - for these coins are supposed minted in Egypt under the 29-30th dynasties.
How many were they in total? You acquired 33 specimens, did you chose them? You say "virtually all pharaonic": did you notice some that weren't Egyptian?
Looking at your photo of 13 of them, I notice that all of them show traces of wear, thus they were not hoarded fresh from mint but circulated for some time, but none shows any test cut, graffito or countermark. That's interesting too, for it seems to me rather unusual for this coinage when found in the Levant. I do not remember if the Buttrey types from Egyptian hoards are tested and/or countermarked.
I did not acquire any of them because 1) I used to collect ancient coins when I was young and innocent but I quit (next stage, quit smoking). 2) I was not on Athenian owl watch, and did not notice these coins arriving on the market. The only numismatic watch I am on is for Alexander decadrachms and Lihyan imitative owls too.

I am especially interested in Athenian owls because I have been working on a big drachms and tetradrachms hoard I intend to publish in the following years - for the moment I cannot find enough time to complete this work. The hoard was found in ancient Raphia (today in the Gaza strip) and represents a very interesting collection of Athenian and imitative silver coins of the 4th c. BC. There are 900 imitative drachms (average weight 4.27 g) 31 of which are overstruck on Edomite dome-shaped coins (average weight 4.26 g). 854 of these drachms are struck from only 5 different obverse and 8 reverse dies : it's a local production minted very near the hoarding place (Gaza? Edom? a local Raphia mint?). There are 353 tetradrachms, most of which are probably bona fide Athenian Pi II and III styles struck after 353 BC, but there are also other kinds : a few classic owls of the late 5th c. BC, 56 early 4th c. owls like the ones from the Lentini and Contessa Sicilian hoards (there's even a die-match), 25 Buttrey and Buttrey-Flament types and 2 bizarre mint-fresh imitative owls I did'nt find in literature. Many coins ( especially the older ones including the Buttrey types) have test-cuts, pits, graffiti, and interesting countermarks (nefer hieroglyph, Isis headdress, one is a Cypriot inscription, another large one from the same die is found on 5 coins, etc.). Because there is no imitative Artaxerxes or satrapic owl, I think the hoard dates back between 353 and 343, before Egypt was retaken by the Persians.

You see, it's a rich and complex subject. This is why I take my time... And this is why your hoard is of great interest for me because, if its Syrian provenance can be established with a reasonable level of confidence, it provides valuable information about the circulation of Buttrey types in the Levant outside Egypt. But why are these circulated coins not tested or countermarked ??? Most of the Buttrey types from the "1989 Syria Hoard" (Van Alfen, AJN 14 (2002), 1-57) and from "my" Raphia hoard are!

 

I will try to get more information from the seller regarding this group of owls. Sellers unfortunately tend to be quite reticent divulging information about coins coming from various sources. He did mention that they came from Syria, which is helpful to a very limited extent. Questions remain unanswered: Where specifically in Syria? When was the hoard discovered? Is this indeed from a hoard or is this an assemblage of coins from different locations? Could these coins have possibly come from a collection?

It is clear that the owls share certain characteristics. They are not Athenian, with a couple of exceptions not in the photo. The reverse owls resemble Buttrey types. They are pretty high grade, lacking test cuts. A few have minor graffiti. One has a countermark (again not in the photo). It is possible that the coins offered were high graded and excluded any with test cuts. That's speculation on my part.

The owls were offered as groups over the course of three months or so by one seller in Israel. Another Israeli seller offered some of these owls, a few of whom were also offered by the other seller! Quite confusing. That seller put the owls up for sale individually on eBay and MA Shops. Since then I am no longer in contact with him. He got into trouble with eBay trying to ship coins out of Turkey, resulting in extreme shipping delays. He is no longer a registered eBay member, though his MA Shops site is still active.

Getting back to the owls from Syria, I will attempt to get more specific information on them. I need to buy a piece of black velvet or felt for a background and photograph all 33 coins. Now that I have written about these coins, perhaps I will have the motivation to go to the store and make the purchase.

I will provide updates as they occur.