Federico De Luca, Alphabetical numbering and numerical progressions on drachms and Massalia’s small bronze coins, Revue Numismatique OMNI n°11 (07-2017), p.74 -111. (original) (raw)
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What did the monograms on the Greek coins mean? Did they really show the monetary magistrates' names that supervised the different issues or were they just control marks, as we believe today? My book "I numeri svelati. Alla scoperta delle notazioni numeriche riportate sulle monete greche" (Editrice Diana,Cassino 2015), recently published in Italy, comes to the conclusion that these symbols are numbers (expressed in the ancient Greek language using the same alphabetical letters) indicating the issue's edition, i.e. the number of coins minted. This article resumes the main lines of my book.
Monograms on Aspendos staters have reputedly been difficult to understand as these were considered signs with Greek forms derived from the Pamphylian dialect. However, if these acronyms are considered as signifiers representing numbers, expressed in Greek with the same letters, rather than acronyms interpreted like monograms made up of letters, these are then unexpectedly read as continuative numbers, marking a gradual advancement in the minting process.
Cercetari Numismatice, 2019
Over time, we collected all kinds of images and data of coins that aroused our interest at one point. They were part of different private collections of which nothing is known today. The coins come from the region of Dobruja, offering through their presence new features of the movement of people and money during the Roman period. Thus, we describe some coins from Tyras, from Istros and Odessos, from Nicaea and Prusias ad Hypium, from the province of Bithynia, but also isolated issues from Topirus, Amisus Pontus and Caesarea in Cappadocia. Some pieces wear countermarks with legends such as TONZOV, PR, or the monogram attributed to the city of Antioch in Pisidia; others are punched with an imperial head attributed to Vespasian by an unknown mint.
The monograms reported on the Greek coins are often interpreted as a monetary magistrates’ or engravers’ signature but this explanation appears insufficient in the presence of issues that carry a multiplicity of different monograms. From an analysis taken from a specific issue full of monograms, Ptolemy I Soter’s gold stater issue with on the obverse the king’s first portrait and on the reverse an elephant quadriga, derive different answers: the monograms appear to be numerical notations, numbers that helped to bring the count of the coins minted and of those which are in process of being minted.
Gephyra, 2018
From the reign of Nero to the ensuing civil wars (68-69 CE), the regions of Moesia and Thrace witnessed the widespread coining of Neronian bronze with Latin legends, typified by the 'reproduction' of certain types from the mints in Rome and Lugdunum. Especially noteworthy was the Perinthus mint, whose specimens circulated alongside local coinage with Greek legends. These issues, along with certain bronze series from the mints in Nicaea and Nicomedia, would later undergo widespread countermarking in the Danube and Asia Minor regions with countermark types using the emperor Galba's name, in both Latin and Greek lettering, either spelled out or abbreviated. Minting order and the subsequent countermarking allow us to again take up some major questions that have arisen regarding the coinage and distribution of imperial bronze in the western part of the Empire from the time of Augustus' monetary reform onward. The complexity and multiple ramifications of this phenomenon have heretofore stymied attempts to devise an accepted, definitive explanation. Specifically, a framework is needed to comprehend the several outright local 'reruns.' Most of these are struck but a few are cast, and evidence shows they circulated daily alongside official issue, whose types they unflinchingly imitated from the central mints in Rome and Lugdunum, even while clearly bearing stylistic and morphological features that were generally inferior to their models. However, among this broad set of widespread issue various levels of production are found, with differing degrees of adherence to prototypical output from the main mints.