I'll use this thread to post my Nabataean lead tesserae. Some of you that follow my pursuit of these pieces know that I was thwarted the last time around, but I have every assurance from the dealer in Jerusalem that this one is on the way. I've bought pieces from him before, and have never been disappointed. The attribution is Hoover, K group. Obv. Laureate head of Zeus-Hadad; Rev. Charging bull left, linear border. The dating is uncertain. Possibly during the reign of Aretas IV, but corroborating evidence is needed from excavations. I could go on at length about these tesserae if anyone's interested, or not... It's a small piece: 13mm, 1.5g, so you get a small pic. One of these days I'll post a "nice" coin, but not today.
Do go on. If you can convince me that these are not coins that just happen to be struck in lead, I will buy you a drachm.
It's a losing proposition, for me. However, just to pick apart the various arguments, let's start with Schmitt-Korte's contention that when only two of the pieces were known, they could easily be dismissed as test pieces for bronze coins that were never struck. Do you think that's a fair assessment? Is there actually any archeological evidence, from any ancient culture, that suggests that trial pieces were struck in lead? It's not a rhetorical question - I just haven't read anything on the subject. My gut feeling is that with over 60 of these tesserae in 12 types, they were not trial pieces. You would expect at least some of the designs to have made it onto bronze coinage, but they didn't. Even the (theoretically) earlier ones of Athena/Nike devices diverge substantially from the bronze issues of the same typology.
Test strikes in lead are known from the medieval and (I believe) the Roman period. Most lead issues of the Greek period that are called test strikes are counterfeits from modern dies. See: De Callataÿ, Francois. 2010. “Les Plombs à Types Monétaires En Grèce Ancienne.” Revue Numismatique: 219–255.
Very interested, please continue. I fear that when you finish this thread, I would have already made several attempts to buy these coins.
I suspected as much. It seemed like a stretch to assume they were test pieces. Hoover suggests that if they're not test pieces, there can only be two possibilities: they are emergency coinage, or tokens. I know you would add a third possibility, that they were in fact coins, but not necessarily emergency coins: that they could have been created by the less-wealthy class as legal tender, and possibly even officially sanctioned as such. As to the possibility of emergency coinage, here's what Hoover has to say on it, taken from CCK... It sounds like a lot of conjecture, but it does sound plausible.
Many who write about "emergency coinages" imagine some drastic event limiting the supply of the metal, most often military activity. No one seems to acknowledge the fact that small denomination coins in any period before the mid-19th century are struck to ridiculously tight profit margins for the mint. A minute fluctuation in the cost of metal, labor, or transport can quickly eliminate the meagre seignorage profit, and no mint will long produce coins at loss. So yes, they may be an "emergency coinage," but of the kind of mundane, everyday emergency that mints faced up to the modern period. Another plausible explanation, though even more conjectural than the above, is that lead coinages were struck to limit their area of circulation and reduce a specie drain. Take, for example, the iron coins of the Southern Song dynasty. To prevent the bronze cash from flowing irrevocably over the border into Jin-controlled territory, the government instead cast iron coins to circulate in the border regions. Compare this with the leads of Alexander Jannaeus found widely in the Transjordan region. (Disclaimer - this is merely speculation)
In fact, both Obodas III and Aretas IV had to deal with financial challenges stemming from conflicts with Herod the Great and tributes paid to Augustus. The drain on silver was such that Aretas IV struck a series of bronze coins meant to replace the increasingly scarce drachms. I would add my own bit of speculation and say perhaps the tesserae were filling in for the bronze that was filling in for the silver. It's certainly possible in the case of the Nabataean tesserae. Almost all of the pieces can be provenanced to Jordanian excavations, which for now suggests that they circulated in Petra and its environs. However, the amount of archeology exercised upon the Nabataeans is the tiniest tip of the iceberg, so only time will tell.
Wow => I absolutely "love" this Nabataean coin => it has a fricken "animal" on it!!! (cha-chinnnggg!!!) Hey, JA => yah ummm, I always think that your stuff rocks, but this time it actually has something from my wheel-house => the ol' Charging Bull is a total winner!! (congrats)
I'll add one more quote from Hoover's article in CCK and summarize my thoughts on the coin/token debate. I don't see a good reason to discount this theory. In fact, the only explanation that doesn't make any sense to me is test piece theory. Any one of the other three theories as to the economic role of the tesserae appears plausible: they could have been emergency coinage, or non-emergency legal tender, or tokens as described in the quote above. They may even have served various purposes at different times. The difficulty in ascertaining an exact function lies in the lack of archeological evidence, and is compounded by the fact that the Nabataeans kept no written history (that we know of). I'm not bothered by leaving it a question mark, however. Part of what draws me to ancients is the aura of mystery surrounding various coins. It's a puzzle that may never be solved, but I find it enjoyable to play with the pieces.
So, to summarize his argument: - Aretas already issued "silver" coins in bronze - the types differ from those of the silver and bronze coinage From there he makes the jump to tokens, comparing these to the Roman pieces (the function of which is far from certain). To this we can add the traditional anti-lead bias that western numismatists unknowingly follow. Therefore, he decrees theymust obviously be tokens. Am I the only one who sees this as particularly weak reasoning?
I wish there was a smoking gun. It would be nice to have an inscription that said, "King Aretas distributed tokens of largesse at such and such festival," or, "These coins were made for spending." I don't see any sort of strong argument one way or another, at least when it comes to the Nabataean tesserae. I'm sure the situation is quite different when it comes to the Greeks and Romans, who were as copious about their writings as the Nabataeans were stingy. On the subject of contemporary accounts of tesserae being used as tokens, Hoover does cite a few sources that include Suetonius. I haven't looked them up, and you're probably well aware of them anyway. So I have to ask, is there any conclusive evidence that the Roman tesserae may have been used as tokens in the way Hoover describes?
Even if it was known that Aretas did engage in largess, there would be no evidence to show that this was the gift. Seutonius discusses the public distributions and notes that redemption chits were at times distributed to the public. But lead is mentioned nowhere in this context and "tessera" never appears alongside "plumbum." Martial, however, twice alludes to lead coinage, in epigrams 74 and 99. See pg. 24-25 of my thesis.
Interesting. In fact, the first two sources Hoover uses to corroborate the use of lead tesserae as tokens don't mention lead coins at all! The word "ticket" is used, but what could that mean? Suet. Aug. 40:2 Suet. Aug. 41
In the first passage, the word is "tessera," and is translated as ticket. Seut. Aug. 40.2: The second passage refers to "tesserae nummariae," and is translated as "money ticket." Set. Aug. 41.2: See also, Seut. Dom. 4.5:
They were "tesserae" and "tesserae nummariae." I have found nothing to firmly connect the leaden coin-like objects with the word tessera. Tessera is almost perfectly analogous to the English word "token." You can have an entry token, a good-for token, a password token, or even a token member of a group. On the utility of the word "tessera." From Adam Smith's A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890):
