Greetings to all from South Florida...Is the coin described and illustrated below a Roman Provincial Coin of Severus Alexander from the province of Cappadocia and the city of Caesaria? All comments welcome. 20mm 5.80 grams Copper Obv: Bust Right _______ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡ Part of the inscription is missing (off center strike?) from left side of coin. Rev: Three ears of wheat tied at bottom. ΜHΤΡΟ ΚΑΙCΑΡΙΑC...the MH appear to be in the form of a monogram as the second upright is part of each letter, and the last 'C' appears to be inverted and placed radially closer to the center of the coin. ΕΤ Σ...appears in the field to left and right of wheat ears, near the bottom. The sigma appears to be a variant of the capital sigma and signifies year 6 of the reign...~AD 227.
Interesting coin. I assume you searched RPC? There are ten with the tied-corn-ear reverse for Severus Alexander: https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/search/...ight_max=&diameter_min=&diameter_max=&format=
Thank you Marsyas Mike for your response. Yes, I searched RPC online and found two examples with Severus Alexander obverses and year 6 reverses with 3 tied wheat ears from Cappadocia, Caesaria. My initial concern was that, as I was missing the first part of the obverse inscription, it might be possible that the coin originated from a different province and city. I examined the two coins from year 6 but still had concerns about the origin and posted my concern on CoinTalk. With prompting from your link, I went back to the year 6 examples and found that there are 4 ‘duplicates’ of the first illustration and 35 ‘duplicates’ for the second illustration. I was wrong to assume the other examples mentioned were duplicates. It turns out that the ‘duplicates’ are not duplicates, but, additional examples with somewhat different, grades, designs and/or inscriptions. For the first illustration, no matches for my coin are evident. For the second illustration among the 35 examples #14 caught my attention. After examining the reverse carefully, it appears to be a close match to the coin in hand. Since the coin’s reverse is such a close match to my own, I was confident now, that the CIH is from Cappadocia, Caesaria. I also examined the obverse and noted that the second part of the inscription closely matches the CHI with the exception of the last letter on my coin which is too worn to be certain. In addition, the #14 coin is also struck off-center as is the CIH. I now also have a good deal of confidence that the CHI was struck from the same die pair as RPC VI, 6831 (temporary) #14. The mystery is solved. Below, find images of # 14 to compare with the CIH. Thanks again Marsyas Mike for supplying the link that prompted me to re-examine the year 6 examples!
