Alexandria Egypt - Roman Tetradrachm Eagle & E-over-L - Help!

Normally I can figure these out, but this late Roman Egyptian tetradrachm is really baffling me. It is 20 mm and 6.68 grams. The obverse inscription looks like Claudius II (AYT KΛAYΔIOC...?), but I cannot find any with the eagle and the E-over-L to the left (and I'm not sure Claudius II even made it to "year E").

Throughout the day today I looked at a lot of generic "eagle" tet auctions to cover other emperors, etc., but nothing is coming up as a match.



Any help greatly appreciated.

 

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I am having a tough time placing it as well. I have 3 or 4 Alexandrian Tets that I have yet to ID so I am looking forward to seeing what others have to say.

 

It can't be Claudius II, since his coins went only up to Year 3. Besides, he had a beard, and this guy looks beardless.

 

I think there is a bit of a beard there. Just worn. I was looking at every "Year 5" Emperor I could think of but couldn't find a match.

 

Perhaps. But at least all the emperors with more than a very slight beard can be eliminated. The main problem is how common eagle reverses were.

 

But why can't I find an eagle with the LE on the left side? I can find them with L (eagle) E but not on the same side. It's driving me mad!

 

This ruler used two obverse legends. This is the other one that shortened AVTK to AK and expanded his nomen by two letters to compensate.

 

@furryfrog02 @DonnaML and @dougsmit - thank you for your efforts!

I think he does have a beard (sorry for the poor photos). Or maybe some late-Elvis monster muttonchops. If you click the OP image it comes up larger and the beard is a little more obvious.

This "unsolved" aspect makes me feel good in a way because I was afraid I was missing something easy and obvious. At least now I know it is not an easy or obvious one.

@furryfrog02 - feel free to tag in with your unidentified tets on this thread, if you want. Maybe some other mysteries can be cleared up.

 

Hi @Marsyas Mike,

Look at @dougsmit ‘s answer again. This emperor may not be who you think.

- Broucheion

 

That's Aurelian I believe, but I don't think that's who it is either.

 

Aurelian? The portrait does look similar, as does the legend. Thank you! (and thank you @dougsmit )

Checking Aurelian on acsearch (231 hits), I did find some eagles dated with Year E, but none with the E-L stacked on the left. Rather, they have the ЄTOVC Є legends:



https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=4232165

Of course acsearch doesn't have everything. Earlier today I was looking at any short-haired, short-bearded 3rd century emperor (Macrinus? Didn't rule long enough for a year E, etc. etc.).

I did find a Septimius Severus - clearly not my coin, but at least a left side E-L:


https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1887926


The search continues!

 

I read your coin as AVΤ Κ Λ Δ ΑVΡΗΛΙΑΝΟC CΕΒ which Sear lists as Aurelian's primary Alexandria legend. The references below may be helpful.

Dattari:
https://archive.org/details/moneteimperialig01datt
https://archive.org/details/moneteimperialig02datt

BMC Alexandria:
https://archive.org/details/cataloguecoinsa00medagoog

 

Yep, Aurelian. Below are some snippets from Emmett, Milne and Curtis… some of the major and most common references.

Emmett: Here year 5 is given a rarity rating of 2 (1 being common, to 5)

Milne:

Curtis: The coin seems to be in Curtis too but the description notes that the head is turned back in error. The dashed lines indicate the coin was not listed in the BMC. The 4416 is the cross reference to Milne.


Usually, I just hit up acsearch like many of us… but it’s not shown there so it gave me a fun and somewhat rare opportunity to use real books which I enjoy!

 

Thank you so much for those references, @dltsrq - I had no idea those were on Internet Archive. They have been added to my favorites!

 

Thank you thank you thank you, @Orange Julius! I appreciate the effort (and admire your library).

This does show up how I usually operate - which is to "borrow" information from coins found on acsearch, FORVM, Wildwinds, etc. But sometimes this just does not pan out for me. Now I'm "borrowing" from your library.

It is interesting that this is "only" an R2 - given the absolute absence of examples in acsearch, etc. I wonder if Aurelian's eagle tets are so generic/boring that the major auction houses don't bother selling them in separate lots, but rather group them in big lots?

Anyway, it's great to get this nailed down. Thanks again!

 

I downloaded the Dattari and BMC pdfs but they are so massive that my computer hates opening it.

 

When R5 means one or two, we can not assume that R2 means there are buckets of them. It is also a factor when there are a hundred of something with 90 being horrible and the ten not up to 'standards' of most collectors. Alexandrians are not a specialty for condition centered collectors.

 

Rarity with things like LRB, late Egyptian provincial, Khusro II date/mm, etc can be hard. Most collectors, especially high end ones who tend to write books, do not pay them enough attention. Auction houses tend to follow those books. I have bought unbelievably rare items in group lots because it was not a recognized rarity.

Areas like this is where a collector with superior knowledge can shine if they know a coin is more common or rarer than thought.

 

From the same seller bought at the same time as the OP is yet another "rare" Aurelian tetradrachm.

As with the OP, it wasn't in acsearch or Wildwinds, but I did find one while doing a basic Google search. A seller on mashops notes its rarity: https://www.ma-shops.com/vosper/item.php?id=8277 Despite said rarity, that he is only asking $78 for it shows he isn't putting an enormous monetary value to it.

More exciting for me personally, I found that two CT'ers have owned such a coin - the same one, it turns out: @Bing then passed on to @Justin Lee here: (see both pages 1 and 2 of the post): https://www.cointalk.com/threads/aurelian-alexandria-year-1.353957/

Here is the @Bing photo, used without permission (I hope you're okay with this, Bing!):



Bing's and Justin's is nicer than mine, but here it is, with some unfortunate reverse gunking:



As @dougsmit notes in his post above, this one has the AK DOM.. "expanded nomen" legend.

 

@Marsyas Mike, I apologize for saying above that I didn't think it was Aurelian -- I made the same initial mistake you did, by looking only at acsearch, where I didn't see any examples with the L and E in the same field.

Here's one more catalog citation for the record: K & G 106.46 [Kampmann, Ursula & Granschow, Thomas, Die Münzen der römischen Münzstätte Alexandria (2008) at p. 332. It's the third from the bottom in this column:



The "D" reference is to Dattari.

Here's the Aurelian legend key, giving the meaning of "Aa":



Regarding the rarity scale in Emmett, keep in mind that it's primarily based on the presence of examples in "published major Alexandrian collections," along with a limited number of auction results. (See Emmett p. xvii.) So it doesn't necessarily bear much resemblance to what's actually available on the market at any given time.