Trajan Provincial Coin with Camel on Reverse

Great coins all. Don't have any camel types. Will have to remedy that.

 

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If you don't care too much about certain defects, there's one available right now on VCoins for only $60, with a decent obverse portrait of Trajan and a recognizable reverse. (I was tempted, but decided against it.) See https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/in...side_caesarea_cappadocia/1272737/Default.aspx

 

Ah, thanks!

 

That a very interesting coin!

Unfortunately, I do not have any coins showing a camel, so that puts me over the hump, or humps!

 

Speaking of hump vs. humps, one issue I forgot to mention about my coin is the mystery of why this type depicts a two-humped Bactrian camel -- native to Central Asia and not found in Arabia -- rather than the one-humped dromedary camel that's actually found in Arabia. (The one-humped dromedary is the kind shown on the other type of Trajan coin shown in this thread, the one depicting the personification of Arabia with a small dromedary.) Is it possible that my type of coin was designed by someone in Rome who didn't know the difference? It's hard to believe that anyone actually living in Arabia Bostra would have made that mistake.

 

a couple of questions raised here (which was first Imperial or provincial and camel humps) are talked about in Numismatic Chronicle 2015

The Camel Drachms of Trajan in Context: Old Problems and a New Overstrike BERNHARD E. WOYTEK and KEVIN BUTCHER

you can download it from Jstor

 

One hump, two humps,
The camel grumped.
There’s nothing ordinary
About this dromedary!
For I have three,
As you plainly can see!
So out with the common,
I’m certainly no robin,
As I get my daily paces
To the next oasis.

 

Thanks!

 

This is what the 2015 Woytek & Butcher article surmises (at p. 127 of the journal issue containing the article*) as the reason for the mysterious depiction of a Bactrian camel -- exactly what I guessed, as it happens:

"[R]ecently, one of the present authors argued that the choice of the Bactrian camel as a coin type for drachms circulating in Arabia may have been the
result not of political considerations, but of a simple mistake by the Roman official
responsible for the design of these coins, who was probably working in the central
mint administration in the empire’s capital and who was not aware of zoological
subtleties. Admittedly, this radical re-evaluation has not gone unchallenged. There seems to be archaeozoological evidence for the presence of Bactrian camels on various Roman sites in Europe, and Diodorus Siculus specifically mentions that
among the different kinds of camels occurring on the Arabian Peninsula in his day,
i.e. in the first century BC, there were also two-humped camels. It may thus be
presumed that Bactrian camels were present in Arabia for breeding purposes in the High Principate, too. Still, in view of the fact that there was an indigenous camel variety in Arabia with one hump which normally featured as the region’s mascot, the choice of a two-humped animal as a coin type for Trajanic coins circulating in Arabia continues to be perplexing, in our opinion.

The reason why an involvement of some sort of the mint of Rome in the production of these coins may be regarded as certain is above all their style. Apart from the two imitative pieces catalogued above ‒ which are stylistically quite diverse between themselves, by the way ‒ the dies used for the production of these drachms are uniformly characterised by very fine engraving." [Article continues with explanation.]

(Footnotes omitted.)

* The Numismatic Chronicle (1966-) Vol. 175 (2015), pp. 117-136.

 

It's very likely that both types of camels were present in Rome. All sorts of animals were imported to Rome from throughout the empire and beyond, mostly for use in games at the Coliseum and elsewhere. The engraver of the reverse die probably used the most readily available camel as the model, as it turns out the wrong one for this coin.

According to Robert Graves, Claudius used camels in his campaign in Britain, to great effect. Apparently the ponies driving the British chariots panicked upon seeing the camels and experiencing their disagreeable odor, causing them to suddenly stop their charge and make many chariots turn over.

 

I see that this is a provincial drachm, not a denarius from Rome.

Still, it is possible that a two humped camel was used in Bostra for the reverse. The die engraver probably didn't care or paid no attention regarding the one versus two hump quesiton.

 

The authors of the article I quote above suggest that this provincial drachm was designed in Rome. In fact, later in the article, they suggest that it may have been minted there, or that at least the dies were created there and shipped to Arabia.

 

Thanks. I getting up to speed, just give me 30 years....

 

Great coins and info in this post.

It got me digging around the web today and I found this article on Trajan's Arabian coins that might be relevant. By Barbara Zajac. Lots of information on Antioch and Rome mint theories, and camel types and their significance:

https://books.google.com/books?id=1...n&sa=X#v=onepage&q=trajan bostra coins&f=true

I have a couple from that area/era:

Drachms:





Denarius of the type:

 

According to the Woytek & Butcher article quoted above, 75% of the Trajan camel drachms have what they call obverse bust type "f," which they describe as
"Laureate bust of Trajan right, in cuirass (with pteryges visible at the shoulder) and
paludamentum, which is held together on the shoulder with a fibula, seen from
behind."

Here is their illustration showing five examples of bust type "f," from Plate 14 at the end of the article:



According to the article, Example 7 comes from a May 21, 2013 Roma Numismatics auction, Lot 767. Here's a larger image of the coin, from the Numisbid auction archives:


Am I imagining things to think this coin is from dies very similar to my example, which I'll show again here?


The reverse looks essentially identical to me (including the legend), and the obverse portrait (including the cuirass portion) looks very similar to me as well, with the major exception that the laurel wreath on Trajan's head is different. Certainly, my coin is much closer to this one than to any of the article's other examples, and clearly falls within category "f."

 

Thanks.

 

May I assume that the reason nobody has answered my question is that people agree with me that there's a reverse die match between my coin and the one illustrated as Example 7 in the Woytek & Butcher article, and that the obverse dies are the same too, except for the laurel wreath? (Were dies ever altered in some minor way, which might account for the single difference?) Perhaps everyone thought my question was rhetorical, but you should understand that I've never before seen any kind of die match for any of my coins, so I tend to doubt my own perceptions!

 

it looks like it

Yes, sometimes dies were reworked.

 

Thanks! Good to know that my eyes weren't deceiving me.

 

Modern days, we have reworked dies and tooling several times as things changed. Part of the process.