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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;PipersSpring, post: 2540335, member: 82411&quot;]You may have solved a problem that has baffled the experts. Many or perhaps most Tyrian year 162 Shekels of Tyre have a typical three digit greek date, but for this one year only, the last digit appears to have been modified to form &#039;B&#039; (beta), but was previously engraved as something else. The Phoenicians who engraved the dies may not have spoken either greek or latin, and for that matter may have been illiterate, so that may explain the problem. Die cutters have been rarely known to change last years date to this years date, in order to re-use the die, but it&#039;s hard to imagine changing next years date in to this years date. For whatever reason, they appear to have stamped over one digit to create another, possibly in an attempt to recycle some of the previous year&#039;s undistributed shekels of Tyre.</p><p><br /></p><p>This blog discussion has suggested an answer. Like car manufacturers who release next years model in the last half of the current year, the Tyrian mint may have started making next years model (which would end in our 3, but their gamma Γ), only to have the Romans demand more of the current year coins. The solution would be to simply change the Γ in to a B.</p><p><br /></p><p>What about the P-R thing? The mint craftsmen may have made this die on a Monday, having not quite recovered from the weekend and simply accidentally engraved a P when they intended to engrave a B. Or they may have simultaneously been making year 162 and 163 dies and gotten confused. Either way, you&#039;ll see in the picture that they did a nice job with everything but the B, so something happened to that B, probably before it was made in to a Beta</p><p>[ATTACH=full]544327[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]544328[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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