Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:14:20.332Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Syriac Substitute-Currencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2016

J. G. Milne
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a note, published in 1934, on the currencies of East Syria under the Roman Empire, I described some clay tesserae from Palmyra which resemble coins in their shape and types, and suggested that they might have been used to supplement the regular metallic currency in emergencies. Some further examples of these tesserae have come to my notice, which add a few details to the account given, and a kindred group has been described in the reports of the excavations at Seleucia-on-Tigris.

The tesserae stamped with designs borrowed from official coins, in all the cases that I have seen, are copies of the types of Sidon noted in the previous article, B.M.C. 87 of the second century B.C. (Fig. 2) and B.M.C. 217 of A.D. 116/7 (Fig. 1). There are now three specimens of the former and four of the latter in the Ashmolean Museum, all from the same dies: they seem to have been produced by a process which resembled striking from dies rather than moulding.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1939 , pp. 93 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1939

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 93 note 1 Ancient Egypt, 1934, 24 Google ScholarPubMed.

page 93 note 2 The specimens added to the Ashmolean collection since the previous article were presented by Messrs. A. H. Baldwin & Sons, and came from Palmyra.

page 93 note 3 This expression is obtained by holding a coin with the axis of the obverse type vertical, and rotating it on that axis.

page 94 note 1 Palestine Dept. Quarterly, vi. 78 Google Scholar.

page 94 note 2 McDowell, R. H., Stamped and Inscribed Objects from Seleucia, 241 ff.Google Scholar: see also Newell, E. T., Coinage of Eastern Seleucid Mints, 98 Google Scholar. Judged by McDowell's plate VI, the Seleucian clays were much more roughly moulded than the Palmyrene.

page 95 note 1 McDowell, R. H., Coins from Seleucia, 44 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 96 note 1 B.M.C. Phoenicia, 233/44 ff.

page 97 note 1 These coins are now at the Institute of Archaeology, Regent's Park; they have been classified by Mr. J. S. Kirkman, to whom I am indebted for information.

page 97 note 2 The references are to the British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins (B.M.C.) and to H. Mattingly and Ed. Sydenham, Roman Imperial Coinage (R.I.C.).

page 98 note 1 B.M.C. Arabia, p. lxxxv.

page 98 note 2 Pal. Expl. Quarterly, 1937, 256 Google Scholar.

page 98 note 3 Pal. Dept. Quarterly, vi. 78 Google Scholar.

page 98 note 4 On Egyptian leaden tokens, see Catalogue of Alexandrian Coins in the Ashmolean Museum, p. xliv.