Jumping into the Nile - new collecting interest!

Newest pickup.

I like this one as it has two unusual features - a break in the obverse legend, and an exergual letter on the reverse.

 

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Haha I feel like that’s a made up word, but it makes sense eh?

 

It's real, all right!

 

I have 2 Alexandria tets. I showed my Hadrian before

Hadrian 133-4
ΑΥΤ ΚΑΙϹ ΤΡΑΙΑΝ - ΑΔΡΙΑΝΟϹ ϹƐΒ, laureate draped and cuirassed bust of Hadrian, r., seen from rear / L ΙΗ, Sarapis seated, l., holding sceptre; to l., Cerberus
25 mm 12.71
RPC III, 5871 , BMC 620-623

Although the coin is corroded, I like Hadrian's portrait. I consider this a good deal.

I have recently added another tet, this time from Maximianus. I had no coins from him and I consider interesting to have a late provincial. Plus interesting colors.



Tetradrachm BI
Egypt, Alexandria, Maximianus (286-305)
Obv: A K MA OVA MAΞIMIANOC CEB; laureate draped and cuirassed bust right / Rev: Homonoia (Concordia) standing left, raising right hand and holding double cornucopiae
L - Γ (= yr. 3 = A.D. 287/8).
20 mm, 7,20 g
Milne 4855v; Curtis 2091; Emmett 4141.

This auction was unplanned so the budget was very limited (I wanted an Aspendos stater and a Tiberius dupondius from Commagene). I lost a nice Probus Alexandria tetradrachm, with eagle, that was probably nicer than this Maximian but I preferred adding a new emperor.

 

Two of Maximian:

EGYPT. Alexandria. Maximianus, first reign, 286-305. Tetradrachm (Potin, 19 mm, 7.26 g, 12 h), RY 8 = 292/3. ΜΑΞΙΜΙΑΝΟC CЄΒ Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust of Maximianus to right. Rev. Є/ΤΟΥC / H within laurel wreath. Dattari (Savio) 5999. Emmett 4161.8. K&G 120.67. Extremely rare. Light deposits, otherwise, very fine.

From the Rhakotis Collection, formed in the 1960s and 1970s (with collector’s ticket).



--

20mm, 8.0 grams

Obverse: AK M OVA MAEIMIANOC CEB
Laureate, draped bust right

Reverse: Eagle standing left, head right with wreath in its beak; star in left field, L-Delta

Date: Year 4 = A.D. 289-290

Reference: Milne 4921, Emmet 4108

I hope you like it and feel free to post any Alexandrian tets!

 

@ambr0zie , for some reason these tets often have some really unique minerals, often dark blue azurite that you just don't find anywhere else! Nice Maximian, I'd say you got a better one than I do!

 

Excellent, @hotwheelsearl .
The nice colors were the reason I bought this tet. Probably overpaid a little but not at the "whoops what did I do" level.
The other reason was that Maximian was missing completely from my collection. The Probus one was perhaps nicer but I can't take them all.

 

...Um, @DonnaML, I'm reading this thread, and asking myself, 'Does everyone Just Already Know about the Amazing threads Donna (and maybe somebody else, too) has done about the earlier Roman Provincial phases of this stuff? Reeking as some of it does of How Freaking Long Pharaonic religion (and geographic boundaries) Lasted? It still gives me new respect for the Ptolemaic dynasty as cultural custodians. --In dramatic contrast to curators!

 

CT member TIF has a spectacular collection of Egyptian coinage, hopefully she'll post a few of her gems for this thread . Pictured below is one of my favorite Tets from Egypt.

 

Indeed she does -- in both quality and quantity, with more than 100 Roman Alexandrian coins, compared to my 25 or so. But here are a few of mine I particularly like, with the emphasis on those portraying the more traditional Egyptian iconography -- thereby complementing my small collection of Egyptian antiquities -- as opposed to the ones depicting Serapis, Nilus, Zeus Ammon, the personification of Alexandria, etc,:













Plus, traditionally Egyptian or not, I do love this drachm with Trajan in a quadriga of elephants:

 

Roman Egyptian coins can be quite attractive in my view...

 

Donna, Indeed you've got some gems . The elephant quadriga drachm is my favorite. The Roman engravers really exploited the rich culture & mythology of Egypt, & surprisingly the Greeks didn't. The 1st & 2nd century Roman patricians created a strong tourist industry for the Egyptians, & I'm sure many of these handsome coins were brought back to Rome as souvenirs .

 

Your last sentence got me wondering, what is the geographic extent that Alexandrian coins were found? As I understand they were only legal tender in Alexandria proper, and not circulated elsewhere

 

h.w.earl, Your question is impossible to answer , but you are correct stating that Egyptian coinage was legal tender only in Egypt . Never the less, why wouldn't a "well to do" tourist bring home a few of these coins as keepsakes or souvenirs ? I brought home coins from Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Germany, France, & Austria even though I couldn't spend them at home . They are important keepsakes to me.

 

Keep reading. Below what you quoted was an ad for their services that suggests that you must love words since the one you looked up is found only in their Unabridged dictionary and not in one of the hundred or so edited down books. As I recall, they stopped printing the large Unabridged books because of the size and expense when the online version is so much better in so many ways.

Question: If 'Logophile' is a person who loves words and the study of their use, is 'Logophilia' the disease/addiction to that study which is really quite common among students of the language who could also be described as 'logophilous' (the adjectival form)? English has always been a language understood in several layers with many people considered to be fluent but hardly knowing a tenth of the words not even including the specialized vocabularies of things like medicine, law or numismatics. For beginners in such a 'loving' addiction, try one of the pages of Dr. Goodword:
https://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/philias.html
How many of those are 'real words' by your definition. All words in a language were 'made up' by someone and many can be understood by parsing their component parts even if they have never before been experienced directly.

Some may like the easy approach by subscribing to Dr. Goodword's free daily word where those so inclined will discover more than they want to know about a different word each day.
https://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/today
Today's word is "sink", a noun shown with five meanings of which four are in my active vocabulary but the fifth is obvious when you read it in a sentence. I might have said 'pit' instead but hopefully no one would call the hard thing in a peach a 'peach-sink'. It is easy to get carried away.

Collecting useless old words might be akin to buying old coins you can not spend. You might need to take care when using them. Words have the advantage of being cheaper but either hobby will get you funny looks from people whose hobbies are more mainstream.

 

On the other hand, you can see that google claims 663,000 results for the word "exergual." I admit that I haven't checked them.