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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2509334, member: 19463&quot;]InArchaic Greek there were three acceptable ways to write.&nbsp; When writing left to right, letters would be made as we consider correct today.&nbsp; When writing right to left, ALL letters would be made mirror image but letters like A and O don&#039;t change when you flip them so who would notice?&nbsp; The third method was called Boustrophedon (as the ox plows) where on line went one way and the next the other. Collect&#039;s Akragas is a fine example of Boustrophedon on a coin.&nbsp; The Messana is a problem since the last letters NION read the same if considered base out and left to right or base down and Boustrophedon.&nbsp; However the retro N&#039;s suggest the cutter was thinking the latter.&nbsp; If the legend were to be taken as base out and encircling, the N&#039;s should go the other way. </p><p><br /></p><p>I recently posted a Kroton coin in another thread with legend OPQ which is just plain old wrong since the P needs to go the other way if the Q is on the right.&nbsp; The cutter could have moved the tail of the Q to the circle on the left and made the legend clearly left to right.&nbsp; Remembering that dies were cut backbards to make the coins read correctly, I&#039;d just call this a plain old error.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]533427[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Both of my Akragas coins show AK above the eagle and PA retrograde below making them also Boustrophedon.&nbsp; The smaller, second one even shows an Archaic form of the letter Rho (P) which happens to look like the modern R proving what goes around comes around. </p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon</a></p><p>[ATTACH=full]533428[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]533429[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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