Unlisted lambda officina for Licinius Cyzicus follis?

TL;DR: I don’t think this lambda officina is attested for this Licinius coin in RIC. It seems to be an unlisted officina for RIC VI Cyzicus 102 p. 594. Am I right?

So I am continuing to completely re-catalogue my entire collection, with a major goal of assigning proper RIC numbers to my all Roman imperial coins. But this means I have to deal with the arcane mysteries of RIC, which some of you mastered long ago, but which I am still struggling with as a neophyte.

Take, for example, this coin of Licinius. The identification of this coin was really difficult for me. The mintmark initially appeared to be SMH or SMN or even AN_? But comparing this coin with possible combinations of mintmarks and legend breaks pretty clearly narrows the options to Cyzicus and the mintmark to the probable SMK. (The photo doesn't really show the top half of the S, which can be seen in different light.)



The clear lambda in the right field is especially problematic; I don’t think it’s attested in RIC, so the RIC number RIC VI Cyzicus 102 (p. 594) is an approximation.

I have collapsed the relevant RIC information below for what I think is my coin, RIC VI Cyzicus 102.




As you can see, RIC only lists, at most, 8 theoretical officinae, alpha-theta for such a coin, and seems to only attest 7 (through eta) for this particular issue. But the officina mintmark in the right field of my coin is quite clearly a lambda. At first I thought maybe it was a weird alpha or even delta, but it’s definitely a lambda. That would be three officinae beyond what RIC lists, requiring missing kappa and iota officinae too!

I’ve consulted NOT IN RIC and don’t see this officina variant mentioned there.

If you’re still reading this tedious post, thank you.

So to post my original query: I don’t think this lambda officina is attested for this Licinius coin in RIC. It seems to be an unlisted officina for RIC VI Cyzicus 102 p. 594. Am I right?

Licinius I
309-310 A.D.
AE (bronze) follis or nummus
IMP C VAL LICIN LICINIVS PF AVG; laureate head right.
GENIO AV-GVSTI CMH ; Genius standing left, holding patera and cornucopia; lambda in right field. λ
SMK
RIC VI Cyzicus 102 p. 594 (?)

 

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I suspect it is an A. Similar in aspect to the following example from wildwinds.



Regards,
Martin

 

Thanks Martin. I will try to post some better pictures. "A" would make a lot of sense. But I really do believe it's a lambda; the ascender goes up very high on this grapheme. Perhaps an inexperienced die engraver got confused and put a lambda for an alpha. I'll post another pic or two this afternoon and see if others agree with the alpha suggestion.

 

My first thought was that it was a poorly rendered A as well. For it to be lambda there'd have to be three other unrecorded workshops (9, 10, 11)?

 

Yes!

I agree that it seems unlikely that RIC would miss 3 officinae. But I swear, if it's not a lambda, it's a strange A indeed. Again, more pix this afternoon. Thanks for weighing in!

EDIT: And 11 officinae for Cyzicus would be more than that mint is understood to have. Lambda doesn't make any sense. I think a die engraver had too much wine on break, if mint workers ever got breaks. I doubt they were unionized!

 

So after looking at this grapheme every possible way, I think Martin's and @zumbly 's reading is the only logical one. The letter is an alpha I took for a lambda. Upon further review, the letter looks very close to Martin's example.

I think that explanation is far more plausible than positing three unrecorded officinae for Cyzicus. Thanks for the responses.