Eravisci . Mid-late 1st century BC. AR Denarius Imitating Cn. Lentulus. Head of Jupiter right / Globe between rudder and thunderbolt; small X to right, RAVIS (S retrograde) below. Freeman 4 (dies 2/C); “The Eravisci were a tribe of highly cultured Danubian Celts who settled at Gellért Hill near modern Budapest in the third and fourth centuries BC. “ “The Eravisci were the single Celtic tribe in Pannonia whose coinage was based exclusively on Roman Republican denarii and they are also the single tribe who inscribed their tribal name on their coins” Heres the coin type my denarius is imitating, (not mine)
Cool coin and interesting post. Amazing how the obverse and reverse appear to be from two different coins by strike and wear....
Excellent pickup! I've been waiting for the right example of one of these Eraviscan coins for a while. If you ever have a chance, I recommend picking up Essays Hersh where Freeman's study of these types was published. I had an interesting conversation with @Volodya about these a while back and was fascinated by one of the things he pointed out. The Eravisci seemed to have used a relatively small number of dies until they completely fell apart, so you see tons of die matches among their coins. Some of the other neighboring tribes on the other hand used a large number of dies but struck significantly fewer coins per die such that it is rather difficult to find die matches. I am honestly unsure if this should be attributed to different techniques used to make the dies, different attitudes towards die wear or something else, but it adds an interesting depth to these coins.
I found it My coin is from the group of 44 Eraviscan coins studied in the paper.. but it wasn't pictured. Here is my first Eraviscan coin i bought a few months ago, it used to be Volodya's. +yeah, there are a lot of die matches for these...
Another possibility just this second occurred to me. Maybe the Eravisci didn't produce more dies because they literally couldn't. Maybe they only ever had access to one or a couple of die cutters: tribe members who trained elsewhere, itinerant workers hired for a time, slaves; when they moved on or died (no pun intended!) that was it. No more dies were going to be produced, so if the tribe wanted new coins, they had no choice but to use the dies they had until they fell apart.
I didn't realize that obverse dies were used across completely different reverse types. Are those all Eraviscan coins? Is this also the case with Roman issued coinage? Is this the case with any other cultures coinage?
Yeah, they are all Eraviscan coins, All i can think of for Roman issues is when it was done "accidentally" on a few coins.. But it seems like almost all Eraviscan coins are somehow die linked to each other in some way.
I'm not sure how often this happened at Rome. It doesn't seem to have really happened during the Republic except in cases so scarce that it really appears to have been a one-off mint error of sorts rather than something that was allowed or even tolerated, I know that it happened with some of the mints outside of Rome, however. Doug has an excellent set of die-linked Eastern mint denarii of Septimius Severus illustrating this. The tribes neighboring the Eravisci did this as well, and many hybrid types are known because they would get the dies mixed up.
This would lend credence to the idea that they had few engravers and a small issue as Phil suggests. The obverse on the OP looks like it was not only heavy worn but also re-engraved several times during its life.....but the reverse is perfect. Interesting
This one here was re-engraved with a circle on the obverse, then they continued to use the die until it was completely worn out... Also, i noticed that the RAVIS reverse never shows much wear..
