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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ignoramus Maximus, post: 8025103, member: 104741&quot;]Hi [USER=56859]@TIF[/USER]<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>Good point about the relief.</p><p>I&#039;m quite sure that there <i>was </i>a face at some point, though. I can just about make out a (receded) nose, but it&#039;s noticeably clearer on another example in the same auction (and which looks like a die match).</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1390897[/ATTACH]</p><p>Detail of the other coin. (not mine).</p><p>You can just about make out the nose here, it&#039;s like mine. Also, if the face was never engraved, you wouldn&#039;t see the rough, uneven surfaces that both have where the face should have been. Based on the receded placement of the nose I speculated that the portrait was rejected and erased, probably because it wasn&#039;t &#039;butch&#039; enough for a warrior/ Ares type. Or any other reason.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another thing that strikes me as off: the face was removed meticulously, leaving the rim of the helmet intact and without scratch-marks on the helmet. Yet, the same hand that moved so carefully on the left had no problem in carelessly wiping out the legend to the right of it...( the centering on both coins is good enough to have shown the legend). The more I look at it, the less sense it makes...</p><p><br /></p><p>I assumed the work was done in the die. If it isn&#039;t (you make a good point about relief<img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />), then I&#039;m stumped. Removing a face by hand from X coins is a lot of work, even for a slave...</p><p><br /></p><p>I did even (for a short moment) consider a damnatio of some sort, but that is next to impossible: wrong face, wrong time, no other examples in the record. Datames did revolt against Artaxerxes II, but that was not until 10 years after this coin was struck.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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