Dear friend of ancient Coins! Pharaohs on ancient coins are very rare. This is one of these rare coins. It is a Nome coin, which shows the Pharaoh Amenemhet III on the reverse. The Coin: Egypt, Alexandria, Arsinoites Nome, Hadrian, 117-138 AE - Obol, 19.19mm, 4.52g, 0° struck 126/127 (year 11) Obv.: AVT KAI - TPAI AΔPIANOC Bust, left shoulder slightly draped, laureate, n.r. Rev.: APCI - L IA (year 11) Head of Pharaoh Amenemhet III, with Nemes-Headscarf and Uraeus snake, r.. Ref.: Milne1229; Dattari 6210; Emmet 1221; Geissen 3381/3382; BMC 72/73; SNG Copenhagen 1083/1084 rare (as all Nome coins!), good S Nome Coinage For thousands of years, Ancient Egypt was divided into administrative districts that had developed from Neolithic principalities. In Egyptian they were called spt (sepat). The name Nome comes from Greek νομος (nomos), which was used to designate these districts. The districts were often divided, merged into others or were newly founded. In Greco-Roman times there were 22 Upper Egyptian and 20 Lower Egyptian districts. Each of them was headed by a nomarch (a Strategos in Greek times), who was relatively independent of the ruling pharaoh. Almost every region had a local deity with its own mythology. This deity was the tutelary god of the nome and was particularly revered. Important are the Nome coinages, which were all struck in Alexandria, because they show representations of these local deities and thus give us an insight into the local religiousness. A list of all districts was found in the "white chapel" of Sesostris I. in Karnak. The Arsinoites Nome Our coin comes from the Nome Arsinoites. It is located at the confluence of a Nile arm and the ancient Fayum lake. This place was called Crocodeilonpolis by the Greeks because of the adoration of the crocodile. The Fayum Basin lies west of the Nile southwest of Cairo. It was already known in ancient times (e.g. by Herodotus) and was an extensive swamp area in Predynastic times, until it was drained and made fertile by Sesostris III and his son Amenemhet III. Today it is the "vegetable garden" of Cairo. In 2006 over 2.5 million people lived there. The Arsinoites-Nome was added to the list a little later and was divided into the 4 sub-districts (Meris) of Herakleides, Themistos, Polemon and the capital Arsinoe. The capital was named after Arsinoe II. (316-370/360 B.C.), wife of Lysimachos and later, together with her brother Ptolemy II Philadelphus, ruler of Egypt. In Roman times this place was, along with Memphis and Alexandria, the place of jurisdiction of the governor. Numerous papyri in Greek, Coptic and Arabic script originate from here (Förchner). Fayum basin today (Zorbay Tuncer) Amenemhet III. His name means as much as "Amun is at the top". Amun was an ancient Egyptian god of wind and fertility which the Greeks equated with Zeus (not to be confused with Amon, the surname of Re!). On the coin Amenemhet III. is depicted with the royal insignia Nemes-headscarf and Uraeus-snake. Bust Amenemhet III, son of Sesostris III, was pharaoh of the 12th dynasty from about 1842-1795 BC with a very long reign. His father had made him co-regent and with him he ruled the first 20 years together. While his father was more active in foreign affairs with campaigns, Amenemhet III was responsible for domestic politics. One of his most important works was the drainage and cultivation of the Fayum Oasis. He built the Great Canal, which connected Lake Fayum with the Nile. His reign is regarded as the Golden Age of the Middle Kingdom. A local cult of this pharaoh was widespread in Fayum. After the death of his son and successor Amenemhet IV his daughter Nofrusobek became the first woman ever to become pharaoh and thus a model for Hatshepsut. Amenemhet III also went down in history as a great architect. On the rocky plateau of Dahshur, 26km south of Giza, which was used as a cemetery since the 3rd dynasty and on which the famous Snofru's pyramid stands, he had the so-called "Black Pyramid" built. It got its name from the black colour of the Nile mud bricks used. The pyramid has two entrances leading to numerous chambers, corridors and stairs, as well as several burial chambers. Amenemhet III followed King Djoser of the 3rd dynasty with this construction, because only his pyramid has such a complicated substructure. However, the pyramid has never been used as the tomb of the pharaoh. Shortly before the completion of the construction work, considerable building defects became apparent. The subsoil was unstable and the ceiling construction defective, so that the pyramid sagged. The pyramidion made of black granite, which covers and secures the building at the top, was found unused. The "Black Pyramid" For this reason Amenemhet III had a 2nd pyramid built in Fayum near Hawara. It forms the center of the necropolis of Hawara. With 58m height it was the last big pyramid of its kind. Like the Djoser pyramid, it is located in a rectangular pyramid district with a courtyard and a temple of the dead, whose structure must have been unique. The Greek geographer Strabo (63-20 BC) described it and praised it as a wonder of the world. He compared the 1500 rooms with the labyrinth of Minos (Wikipedia) The Hawara Pyramid After being a restricted military area for years, archaeological research is again being conducted there. Today, the German Archaeological Institute (Cairo Department), the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and Waseda University in Tokyo work there. Also reported is an expedition that Amenemhet III undertook in the Sinai. Sources: (1) Hristova/Hoeft/Jekov, The Coinage of Nicopols ad Istrum, 2020 (2) Angelo Geissen, Altes und Neues. Bemerkungen zu den Gau-Prägungen aus dem römischen Alexandria, XII. Congreso Internacional de Numismatica, Madrid, 2003 (3) Der Kleine Pauly, 1979 (4) Gisela Förschner, Die Münzen der römischen Kaiser in Alexandria, 1987 (5) www.daist.org (6) Wikipedia Best regards
Thanks for the geographical and historic background @Jochen1 - and that is a very nice coin. I am involved in the Tebtunis Project at Berkeley to classify and translate the troves of papyri that have been excavated and are in the Bancroft Library. The project has a website. Tebtunis, whose tutelary god was Sobek-Ra, was at the edge of the Fayyum in ancient times and was inhabited in both Pharaonic and Greco-Roman times. https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/libraries/bancroft-library/tebtunis-papyri
Thank you for the great write-up, @Jochen1 ... I JUST finished the book "Chronicles of the Pharaohs" that has writeups for each of the Pharaohs. I opened the book after your post, and I literally went to the pages about Amenemhet III, and definitely remembered reading his contribution to Egyptian History, being one of the better Kings. I regret I have no coins commemorating him, nor a Royal Scarab from his reign. However, I DO have a Scarab that was during the span of History that he was Pharaoh. Egypt SCARAB Middle Kingdom 2065-1650 BCE Scarabaeus Sphinx ex Gustave Mustaki collection Comments: They were generally intended to be worn or carried by the living. This scarab is from the Gustave Mustaki collection. Mustaki amassed a collection of antiquities from Alexandria in Egypt. Mustaki was an avid collector in the early 20th century and his collection came to the UK under Egyptian license in 1947. Many of the pieces are in major museums world wide, including the British Museum, the Getty Museum and the Egyptian state museum. Ancient Art has purchased over 1700 scarabs from this collection.
I still don't understand how numismatists identified the specific pharaoh depicted on the reverse, absent a legend. The uraeus and headscarf are not unique to that pharaoh.
@DonnaML You are of course right that there were many pharaohs. But in the Fayyum basin there was a widespread cult for the Pharaoh Amenemhet III and for no other. Since the Nome coins are known to represent their cult deities, Amenemhet III is not proven, but he is the most likely Pharaoh represented.
I want to add an excerpt from Edda Bresciani & Antonio Giammarusti, MEDINET MADI, the town of Amenemhat III, in 20 SHEDET Issue No. 1 (2014): In his beloved Fayum, in Ptolemaic and roman time, Amenemhat III was worshipped as a god with the name of Porramanres, Pramarres or Premarres, phonetically transcriptions of the Egyptian name Per-aa Nymaatre, i.e. Pharaoh Nymaatre; the fundamental role of Narmouthis in the development and strengthening of his cult is explicitly confirmed by Isidoros’s IV hymn, the last of the four hymns composed in the 1st century BCE by the Hellenized Egyptian Isidoros; the four hymns had been graved on the enjambments of the entrance to the vestibule of Heracleodoros in the Ptolemaic temple of Medinet Madi. Best regards
The names of Amenemhet III. When I came across the name of the Pharaoh Ny-maat-Re in the article about Premarres (the name of Amenemhet II as a deity in Fayum) by Bresciani&Giammarusti, I was a little confused. Was there another pharaoh? But the explanation is very simple: the pharaohs always had several names. Amenemhet III had the following: (1) the Horus name Aa-bau meaning "with great power" (2) the Nebti name Itschi-iaut-taui, meaning "the one who grips the heritage of the two countries" (3) the gold name Wah-anch with the meaning "with lasting life" (4) the throne name Ni-maat-Re, meaning "who belongs to Maat, a Re", and (5) the proper name Amen-em-het with the meaning "Amun is on the top" The Horus name was intended to show that the Pharaoh represented the distant heavenly god Horus. The hieroglyph was the Horus falcon sitting on the Serech, the rectangle of the royal palace. Since Amenemhet II (about 1877/76-1843/42 B.C.) the meaning of this name decreased, but was still found until Antoninus Pius (138-161). The Nebti name symbolised the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and meant "the two countries". Therefore the hieroglyph consisted of the vulture for the goddess Nechbet of Upper Egypt and the erect cobra for the goddess Wadjet of Lower Egypt. Nebti is the dual form of Nebet (Lady) and Neb (Lord) and means "the two Mistresses".) The gold name was probably intended to equate the ruler with the sun. His sign was the Horus falcon sitting on the hieroglyph for gold. The throne name was the most important name of the pharaoh since the 4th dynasty. It was placed in a cartouche next to the proper name. The title was given to him when he ascended the throne during a journey on the Nile on the king's barque and was of course meant to remind of the journey of the sun god across the sky. Afterwards the coronation was carried out. The name "the one belonging to Maat, the Re" refers to Maat, an ancient Egyptian goddess of justice and truth. She was regarded as the daughter of Re and embodied the concept of world order. Re, the sun god, was the main god in Heliopolis since the 6th dynasty. The proper name was given to him at birth. The proper names of the first pharaohs are not known. These names come from later royal lists. At first the proper name was not in a cartouche. This was added only at the accession to the throne. Best regards Jochen
Very interesting and educational, as usual. I also have a scarab which was designed in Phoenicia (Byblos/Tyre) during the reign of the Pharaohs there 1070-1475 BC. Reverse has Isis and a mythological creature. The legend on obverse is inscribed in the Phoenician Alphabet. It's likely to be the name of the Pharaoh. I would guess AKHNATON. I dare not clean the dust. Man.. it's an Alphabet before AHIRAM.
