New Acquisition - New Questions

Congrats, JW, what a fantastic owl! Nicely done.

Mine have “been around the block”. However, I enjoy that they traded outside the Greek World, as they have bankers marks slammed into Athena’s face. (I understand a big no-no for Greeks to desecrate such a powerful Goddess!)





Athens Owl Tetradrachmae,
all~17+g, approx22x6.5mm
Late Classical 393-300 BCE,
Sear 2537, SNG Cop. 63

 

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When I purchased my one example of an Athenian Owl at the NYINC in November 2007, it was only the second ancient Greek coin I had ever bought (the first being an Alexander III drachm of Philip III Arrhidaeus, which I bought at the late, lamented Harmer Rooke in February 1986 along with a couple of antiquities). I still have only six ancient Greek coins even now!

Attica, Athens AR Tetradrachm, ca. 454-393 BCE, Obv. Head of Athena right / Rev. Owl (w/test cut in owl's face), Seaby 2526v. 25 mm., 16.79 g.

I'm having trouble getting the color exactly right in trying to photograph the coin, so I'm posting two versions each of the obverse and reverse:









I bought this coin despite the rather symmetrical-looking scratches on the obverse, and the fact that the appearance of the reverse is seriously damaged by the test cut in the owl's face and whatever that hole is in the owl's stomach, plus the missing final E in the legend -- and is rather worn to begin with -- because the cost was only $325. Even back then, that was about one-third or less of the price of most of the Owls I saw for sale there.

Still, I kind of like the obverse, even though I really can't tell whether it's a Classical Owl Type A, B, or C, to use the classifications in the article I posted (see https://rg.ancients.info/owls/):

Type A Mass Classical Owls, c. 454-431 BC, Athena with a smiling mouth
Type B Mass Classical Owls, c. 431-393 BC, Athena with a frowning mouth
Type C Mass Classical Owls, c. 431-393 BC, Athena with a neutral mouth

Although I'm pretty sure mine isn't smiling, so probably it's Type B or C.

 

Great new old coin, @Bing . Congratulations! (Can’t contribute with much more, I’m afraid....)

 

Thanks everyone for your help. I've been too busy to look through all the material, but I feel confident I can attribute this owl now.

 

Very nice Bing

 

A beautiful reminder of why the Greeks are praised for their appreciation of the beautiful things of life. Now, a question. I have never seen a series of coins that has so frequently come with bankers marks and even chiseled gouges (except for Spanish eight reales coins). Why were they so frequently checked and tested? Was it a coin commonly produced as a counterfeit by felons? Did the Athenian Government turn out a large batch of plated coins? Did a lot of people hate Athens?

 

Given that Athenian Owls were, for a long time, the most common coin used in international trade (and were used more as bullion than as coins), it's only logical that they would be the ones most commonly test cut. See the article I posted yesterday (https://rg.ancients.info/owls/) (illustrations omitted from quotation):

"Like other great powers, Athens treated its money not only as a way of facilitating commerce and trade and projecting its image abroad but also as a way of making money. Athens earned seigniorage profits on each Owl minted, whether the source was freshly mined silver or the silver coins of other cities. The traders and merchants of other cities, in turn, liked Owls because of their easy exchangeability. Owls thus became the world's first great trade currency, and they were followed in this role by among others Alexander the Great tetradrachms and staters, Roman denarii, Spanish American pieces of eight, Dutch lion dollars, Austrian Maria Theresa thalers, and American dollars. . . .

Test-cut Owls can be had on the marketplace at a considerable discount, generally anywhere from 15 to 50 percent of the cost of a coin not test cut. They're damaged coins -- damaged in ancient times -- but they can still retain much interest and eye appeal. Athenian Owls are the single most commonly seen test-cut ancient coins. . . .

Like the previous four Owls on this page, this coin was test cut in ancient times and reveals no interior bronze. Like the Owl three pieces up, this specimen has a countermark, also called a banker's mark, on the reverse to the right of the owl, which is a mark typically used to certify that the coin is legal tender beyond its place of origin or has been retariffed at a different value. The upper mark appears to be a Semitic aleph (A), which would suggest that the countermark is of Middle Eastern origin. Owls are known to have been countermarked in ancient times as far away as India.

The terms "countermark" and "banker's mark" are often used interchangeably for symbols, letters, or numbers that are stamped into the coin's surface after it has been minted for an official purpose. Countermarks are distinguished from graffiti, which are engraved or scratched markings created unofficially. The term "punchmark" is sometimes used for a smaller official mark, as distinguished from a larger "countermark." Countermarks, large or small, are distinguished from "test cuts," which are crude slashes into the metal with a hammer and chisel to determine whether the coin was a silver- or gold-plated counterfeit. Sometimes these differences blur, when punchmarks appear to have been used also to reveal the metal in the coin's core. The term "countermark" or "counterstamp" is also used for the "COPY" or similar indication on modern replicas.

Most test-cut Owls were test cut on the reverse, with most of these in turn being cut through the owl's head. Interestingly, the test cut on this specimen follows the contours of the owl's body. It's likely that the owl's head was cut in half so often for one of two reasons. Perhaps coin testers in lands outside the Greek world were sending a message to Athens, a passive-aggressive protest against Athens' hegemony. Athens was one of the imperial powers of the day, controlling or exerting influence upon territories beyond its own and generating resentment in the process. The Egyptians and Judeans and Phoenicians and Syrians and Anatolians and Babylonians may have simply not liked the snooty Athenians, their pretty bullion, their god, and their god's little owl. Or perhaps, less interestingly, most test-cut Owls were cut at the owl's head because it was the high point of the reverse and cutting here thus caused fewer coins to be broken.

Similarly, the reverse rather than the obverse was typically test cut because it was concave, which also led to fewer coins being cracked during the procedure. If you test cut the convex obverse, there's a cavity under the reverse as the coin sits on its rim.

In his book Archaic and Classical Greek Coins, Kraay described test cuts as "savage incisions inflicted with a chisel with no regard for type or legend." He also wrote that hoard finds indicate that test cutting was normally applied outside the Greek world, where the type (design) on the coin didn't offer the same guarantee of authenticity and where these coins were treated as bullion. And he wrote that some coins were test cut more than once by successive owners because old cuts when dirty or tarnished wouldn't reveal the color of the interior metal and because some forgers created pre-test cut plated fakes.

In their 1988 book Coinage of the Greek World, Ian Carradice and Martin Price wrote that test cutting of ancient coins in antiquity was a frequent occurrence both inside the Greek world (in Athens, for instance) and outside. They pointed to a papyrus reference indicating that in Egypt officials were employed to both collect debt and test cut coins. They also wrote that with some hoards of Greek coins unearthed in the Near East, particularly those from the archaic period, every single one had been test cut. This and other hoard evidence provides support for the view that test cutting was more common outside the Greek world, as Kraay wrote. Finally, Carradice and Price indicated that up to the fourth century BC, simple slashing was the most common method used to authenticate coins. . . .

This specimen has been test cut an astonishing six times, the most test cuts I've ever seen on an Owl, once on the edge (visible on both obverse and reverse) and five times on the reverse. (An Owl illustrated in the section on test cuts in Haim Gitler and Oren Tal's 2006 book The Coinage of Philistia of the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC also appears to have six test cuts, as is the case with one of the Owls illustrated in Peter van Alfen's article "The 'Owls' from the 1973 Iraq Hoard" in the 2000 American Journal of Numismatics.)

This many tests of authenticity on one coin speaks volumes about the high frequency of plated counterfeits that must have existed and about the paranoia that this likely engendered. The random pattern of test cuts visible on the reverse of the above piece imparts a jarring modernistic aesthetic that's also quite interesting. The protuberance near the base of Athena's skull looks like a casting sprue but is actually a flattening of the flan caused by one of the reverse test cuts.

Not all numismatists agree that test cutting was done to authenticate. Ute Wartenberg and Jonathan H. Kagan in their paper "Some Comments on a New Hoard from the Balkan Area" in the 1999 book Travaux de numismatique grecque offerts a Georges Le Rider, Peter van Alfen in his article "The 'Owls' From the 1989 Syria Hoard, With a Review of Pre-Macedonian Coinage in Egypt" in the 2002 American Journal of Numismatics, and Richard Fernando Buxton in his paper "Chisel Cuts: Bureaucratic Control Marks on Fifth Century Owls in the Near East?" presented at the 2009 Archaeological Institute of America/American Philological Association annual meeting have proposed or commented on a theory that test cutting on Owls represented an elaborate system of bureaucratic control in the Middle East.

The logic of such severe gashes into the interior of the metal being used for this purpose, however, is strained. Deep test cuts had the potential of leading, and sometimes did lead, to a coin cracking into pieces, with the more cuts, the more the integrity of the coin's structure would have been compromised and the greater the chance of the coin breaking. What's more, the technology existed for imparting more information through the use of designed countermarks that were smaller, shallower, and safer. It's more likely that the multiple test cuts were just testimony to the abundance of silver-plated copper Owls that were circulating, both unofficial counterfeits and official emergency pieces. Some of the unofficial counterfeit Owls were even struck with test cuts that had been to engraved into the die, as a further deception, trying to fool people that they had already been authenticated. It's likely that some percentage of traders and merchants would not have been satisfied with one cut. Each person test cutting any given piece would have wanted to verify for himself that the interior was good silver."

More at link.

 

@Alegandron, in my post above about my Athenian owl, I mentioned that in addition to the test cut on the reverse in the owl's face, there is also a shallow, circular hole with a dot in the middle, in the owl's stomach. See https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/athenian-owl-r1-jpg.1074779/

I had no idea what it was. But I just noticed several similar bankers' marks on a couple of the heavily-marked coins you posted. Do you think it's possible that this mark in my coin is also a banker's mark?

 

The obverse looks like a Flament III likely as pprp commented a III 16 though I think the mouth is more like III 6. The reverse I think is more in keeping with the Flament II style though I am a bit at a loss to pin down which die group it belongs to

 

Thanks. Now this is an answer from someone well versed in owls. Some of that wisdom seems to rubbed off on its author.

 

I have read through all of the links provided, and I thank all of you for your help. I'm still not 100%, but this is what I have:

ATTICA ATHENS
AR Tetradrachm
OBVERSE: Helmeted head of Athena right, in crested Attic helmet decorated with three olive leaves over visor and a spiral palmette on the bowl
REVERSE: AΘE, owl standing right, head facing; olive sprig and crescent behind
Struck at Athens after 429 BC
17.24g, 26mm
Svoronos pl. 11, 20

Corrections?

 

I notice one major difference in the obverses between Bing's new coin and the one I posted, that I haven't seen addressed anywhere: in mine, there are two separate lengths of chain or other material extending downward to the necklace, both going directly down from the earring (the front length beaded and the back one plain). In Bing's, the beaded and plain lengths appear to be joined together, and both extend down from a spot behind the ear and earring, instead of directly from the earring itself. Is that difference of any significance in identifying the coins?

Also, in mine, the eye is longer and more symmetrical, whereas the eye in Bing's is not symmetrical, and looks almost as if it's in a transitional stage towards a more naturalistic side view of an eye.

Unfortunately, I don't have access to the illustrations in Starr or Flament or Svoronos for identification purposes.