Featured More to this than meets the eye

Despite the description for one of the Dattari coins, I'm skeptical that those protrusions represent uraei. The Augustus example Ed found shows those protrusions more clearly. I'd expect some snake-y curvature if they were meant to be uraei... although as we've seen repeatedly through the ancient ages, what an object is supposed to be and what the engraver creates may be very different.

 

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There are three other examples of RPC 5005 on acsearch.info but none helped. I have RPC and looked at the example there, which is in the BMC. I preferred the RPC picture to the BMC online database so I have scanned it.


The top looks like a pouring spout. There does appear to be a ureaus (snake) on the spout along with four other things.

The vase seems to be decorated with three stick figures. Perhaps something else is intended by they look like stick figures to me.

We have been wondering about the things on top of the so-called spout and imagining a brass instrument. It is interesting that this coin shows up about the same time as Heron of Alexanderia was inventing. He specialized in inventions involving liquid (including the first coin-operated vending machine). This could be the first whistling tea kettle (the patent for whistling tea kettles is from 1890). It could also be some kind of magic trick -- cover one hole, and a different liquid comes out. Or it could be made of gold, and made to look like the hieroglyph @TIF showed us for decorative reasons.

A color photo of the Augustus coin can be seen at
http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...x?assetId=823547001&objectId=1310338&partId=1

 

Unsurprisingly, I suppose, there are little differences between the vessels, particular from emperor to emperor.

However, that give me hope that a real-life example still exists somewhere in a museum basement. I'd love to know more about it-- material from which it is made, details of the design, function.

On my coin, the top projection of the handle has a somewhat uraeus-like curve. The inverted drops don't evoke uraei on my coin or on the Augustus examples.

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I can't make out anything concrete on the body of this coin's vessel. The plate in Dattari (for a Nero diobol; #287) shows a bit more detail, but those details are different from the bits which can be discerned on my coin and I don't think it is due to wear:


Written description in Dattari (translated by Google):
"...on the lid five uraei, above the front body, crown of horns, disk and feathers"

The thing projecting right on the vessel body looks rather like the crown of Isis on the Dattari coin, but nothing like that crown on my coin.

 

Uraeus:

Carthage Zeugitania AR ½ Shekel 17mm 3.8g 2nd Punic War 218-202 BC Sicily mint 216-211 BC Tanit l Horse r sun as double uraeus SNG COP 359

 

I'm really LOVING your Hadrian Tetradrachm!

 

with this coin (not Mine) i understand why Emmett was thinking about a vase

 

Late to the discussion. I'm not too proficient with that type of pottery, but it is a known form. I've been going nuts trying to find it as within the last week I have seen one offered for sale, but I cant remember where. I thought Royal Athena, but no, Berk? no. I may have seen it in an online auction. Anyway, hope that helps.

Also, @LaCointessa , both those lamps are well known fakes!

 

I was hoping you'd chime in, Ken! Let me know if you come across it.

 

I'm still looking. Not in any of the print catalogs I've recently received. Unfortunately yesterday I cleared my browser, so that is no help. It's driving me nuts. But then I am getting older. Just earlier today I forgot the word 'novelty' for about an hour!

 

Yeah... the joys of aging. I hate it when I (temporarily) lose words

 

'Spiky' vases are well known, here are a few Italian and Minoan examples, but not like the coin example:

 

I'm still thinking about that strange vessel depicted on your coin. I think it looks like the bottom half of a canopus. I have a gut feeling that it has to do with something of obvious importance in Egyptian religion like the Osiris resurrection ritual. This would include watering corn mummies and ensuring the fertility of crops, etc. Isis would be involved with the rebirth of Osiris hence her symbol on a similar vessel. This is just a guess on my part. The Osiris canopus in the image below is from Hadrian's villa.

Ps.I think your hypothetical sketch of the spout from above rings true.

 

I like that theory!! Perhaps this type of vessel was used to water the corn mummy!

 

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Wonderful series of photographs and commentary - this is precisely what collecting ancient coins is all about. This is really a terrific! Blake

 

Thanks so much for that lead, @Macromius! I'm reading about the funeral rites of Osiris and subsequent rituals, which are reportedly documented in detail*. Here's a passage which might provide a clue to the vessel's use:

“...Then fresh inundation water was poured out of a golden vase over both the goddess and the ‘garden,’ and the barley was allowed to grow as the emblem of the resurrection of the god after his burial in the earth, ‘for the growth of the garden is the growth of the divine substance....’

-from Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941). The Golden Bough, 1922; chapter 39, section 2

Could the special vessel on this and similar Egyptian coins depict the golden vase used in these Osirian rituals? Maybe the upright "drops" represent sprouting corn. As Macromius pointed out, the vessel's bottoms and pillow are certainly reminiscent of canopic statues of Osiris.

* Now to track down the source described in Frazer's book, as written in the same chapter:

"The funeral rites of Osiris, as they were observed at his great festival in the sixteen provinces of Egypt, are described in a long inscription of the Ptolemaic period, which is engraved on the walls of the god’s temple at Denderah, the Tentyra of the Greeks, a town of Upper Egypt situated on the western bank of the Nile about forty miles north of Thebes."

...and to see if any relics were preserved in those temples, or if there are any engravings of a similar vessel.

 

Very relevant. The Denderah Hathor temple has those very refined late Ptolemaic reliefs where the men and women look very curvy but the art is still pretty traditional otherwise. The Ptolemaic period ended in 30BC. Nero ruled from 54-68AD. What were the years of drought in Egypt, if any, during that period? How did the art change? The vessel on your coin looks very Hellenized to me, especially the upper spout and handle. Very Alexandria.

It seems logical to me that Egypt, the country that fed Rome, would have symbols connected to crop fertility on their coins. I have a worn Egyptian Hadrian drachm with Ceres and Eleutheria both holding grain ears.

I'm just speculating for fun. If I am wrong and it turns out to be some crazy Isis oil lamp or something else, I will gladly submit to the ridicule of this forum! Still I like my theory, TIF.

@Ken Dorney: I love those spiky vases.

 

If anybody here has not read this I would highly recommend it. It is a very interesting read.

 

Well, you said that the top bit of the image looked like the hieroglyph for “gold”. The idea of gold vase would be difficult to get across on a bronze coin, so could it be a combination of a funerary vase and the hieroglyph for “gold”?

 

Getting a little closer?

From a mid-1st century fresco at Villa San Marco in Stabiae:



Ritual of Isis, wall fresco
Priests and priestesses (detail) jointly perform a bloodless rite: the priests carry a bucket (situa) and sprinkler (aspergillum); the priestess carry distinctive jugs with long spouts. From Stabiae, mid-1st century CE
Naples, National Archaeological Museum. Credits: Ann Raia, 2010

Images and description from vroma.org

...

The general style of the "distinctive jug" is similar to the reverse of my coin and the Augustus coins linked by Ed. The spout of the pitcher resembles an ibis head (Thoth). Missing are the inverted droplets. The vessels in this fresco are described as being used in a ritual of Isis. Maybe similar "jugs", but with the inverted droplets (representing sprouting grain?) were used in the resurrection ritual of Osiris?

The hunt continues! I'm having such fun with this Thanks for your help, everyone!

 

This thread keeps getting more and more fascinating.