How Many More Are Out There?

I didn't! I knew it was highly unusual but I reached out to others who were able to confirm the attribution (some search engines are very sticky, some researches use the spelling 'thrysus' and others 'thrysos').

I'd have to look through a lot of books to confirm but it looks Scythian to me.

 

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Do you know the evidence for these to be attributed to Valens? Valens was Christian. So soon after the Julian II attempt to return to a Pagan state, it would seem odd for anything honoring a pagan goddess to be issued. I assume someone has evidence they do not date to the time of Julian???

 

Besides his name on the coin? I know little of the type itself or how they came to attribute the anonymous variants to specific dates, but with the Valens type it would appear that the dating is indeed correct. Old religions die out hard. I dont think it unusual to see a 'pagan' type being used for a Christian emperor. Christianity was quite adept at adopting/incorporating pagan concepts to gain new followers. It may simply be that this one did not need or have a place in the new religion.

 

There are two groups of Festival issues - the anonymous types with the busts of Isis and/or Serapis on the obverse, and those with emperors' busts. The latter group are a fair bit rarer than the former, but we do have have examples representing an unbroken line of rulers from Diocletian up to Valentinian II. Obverse die links and fabric/size comparisons to contemporary regular Rome mint issues show they were struck under those rulers. As Ken has already suggested, things didn't change overnight. Many of the earlier Christian emperors were not so anti-pagan (read 'unpragmatic') as to very forcefully reject the incorporation or continued observance of pagan traditions. Valentinian and Valens were noted to have been particularly tolerant.

The anonymous types are often attributed to the time of Julian, not because there's any proof they were struck during his reign, but because of the general resemblance of Serapis on many of these coins to the portraits of Julian. Alföldi instead suggests that these were only began to be issued from AD 379, when the suppression of pagan activities under Gratian commenced, and the authorities no longer tolerated having these heathen tokens bear imperial portraits, even if they continued for a time to close an eye to the Festivals themselves being held. There appears to be evidence that the Isis Festival survived even the worst of Theodosius's anti-pagan policies and continued until at least the first two decades of the 5th century.