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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 6455261, member: 72790&quot;]The other day I saw a coin posted in an article on horses and one of our members, Curtis, put up an&nbsp; absolutely gorgeous coin of Carthage, a splendid electrum stater with the goddess, Tanit, on it. It was so beautiful I called my wife over to view it. She agreed it was beautiful and said, &quot;Look at that necklace and those ear-rings&quot;. Necklace and ear-rings? I paid attention to mintmarks and control marks, not ear-rings and necklaces. Even after decades of collecting ancient coins I had never once taken note of anybody ever wearing any kind of jewelry, but as I looked more and more at Tanit&#039;s necklace and ear-rings I asked myself why I had never paid any attention to something like that. I decided that maybe I ought to. I might even be able to get the wife to spring for another coin or two by getting a couple with nice jewelry on them.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, I thought that I would research ancient jewelry as it appeared on ancient coins. Pretty quickly I noticed a few things. If any guys or gods wore jewelry it was not the kind (except maybe crowns) that was likely to make onto a coin. Also i learned that big ear-rings and big brooches don&#039;t look very big when found on hemi drachmas and denarii. I also learned that one cannot Google &quot;coins and jewelry&quot; without getting solicitations for hundreds of pieces of jewelry with coins embedded in them. Plenty of articles on coins in rings and necklaces, but none on rings and necklaces on&nbsp; coins. This was not going to be easy.</p><p><br /></p><p>I started checking my coin library and found nothing written about jewelry being placed on coins. Some of the coin books mentioned that rings or necklaces were present but on small coins they could have been miniature toadstools for all I could tell. The only way I could do this was to go through my collection with a magnifying glass, spot something that looked like a ring, or bracelet and then look it up to see if the written description mentioned it. Eventually I started to find a few, especially on the denarii of the Roman Republic. Strangely I did not find much on the Roman coins, even the big dupondii and sestertces, of the Imperial ladies. The Greek coins, especially the staters, did have a number of female divinities, and they were wearing some pieces that were identifiable as in the Carthaginian electrum stater mentioned above.</p><p><br /></p><p>So the reason why I have posted this thread is to encourage members with better eyesight than mine to research their ancients, and medievals while we are at it, to see if jewelry might be more common than it appears to me to be, specially something that might not appear to us to have been jewelry or which just escaped the masculine eye. I have noted here some of the kinds of articles that might be considered jewelry: ear-rings, finger rings, bracelets, necklaces, torcs, diadems, fillets, fibulas and combs. I ask the ladies to forgive me if I left something out. We know from archaeology and literary sources that wearing articles of jewelry was an important advertisement of&nbsp; status and wealth but what we don&#039;t know is how much of it made it to numismatic material. I have posted a few images that I have found among my own coins and would like it if members could find other examples and post images and descriptions of what numismatic connections with jewelry they might find.</p><p><br /></p><p>Images of coins. The large 2 shekel piece of Carthage has Tanit with a noticeable ear-ring. it is Sear 6506, 1979 edition. The Greek stater on the left is of Metapontum and shows Demeter, again with an ear-ring. It is Sear 416. The denarius on the upper right is of Pietas with ear-rings and maybe some kind of diadem or fillet along the hair line. It is Sear 185. The denarius at the lower left is Roma, who always seems to have ear-rings. Sear 176.&nbsp; On the lower right is a denarius of Roma from Narbon with both ear-rings and a necklace. Sear 157 2,000 edition.</p><p><br /></p><p>One last point. I hope this can be an actual investigation by members of their own coins, or others, that will reveal that other kinds of jewelry can be found on coins if closely examined. I have not posted any Byzantine coins here because the emperors and empresses are featured with so much regalia on their heads I can&#039;t figure if they are just parts of their crowns or there is something else there. Also I cannot tell if they are wearing robes closed with fibulae or what might be something else. Thanks for any thoughts, comments or additional images.[ATTACH=full]1257456[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1257456[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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