Kamnaskires

Welcome, Alwin! A toast to you, and to the Arsacids. Footed Cup or Bowl Attributed as Parthian by Trudy S. Kawami, and published in her Ancient Iranian Ceramics from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (1992), figure 170, page 226. Ex-Arthur M. Sackler Collection, accession number 70.2.747. - Bob L.

Well done, Res. Thanks for all of your great work.

Well done, Cam! Looks great. Bob

Quite interesting. Not an area I collect, but I look forward to returning to this thread as it develops. Thanks for posting.

Here's a used-to-own coin (a Phraates II tet from Parthia - since sold off), with my favorite bit of bizarreness from ancient numismatics. I wrote about it some years ago at that other place that most of us recently migrated from. My former coin (and my photography), above, don't quite do the bizarreness justice, so here are a couple spotted online that make the oddity clearer. Take a good look at the renditions of Tyche...a detail is provided to assist. As Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis points out in Religious Iconography on Ancient Iranian Coins, "The religious iconography of the Hellenistic Tyche figure was clearly unfamiliar to the Arsacid court and the (Parthian) die engraver at the end of the second century BC, as otherwise the attributes of a female goddess would not have been used for a clearly male figure."As CNG states it, "The god depicted on the reverse of these tetradrachms appears on no other Parthian coin, and apparently nowhere else...Such a representation of a transgender pantheistic deity is very unusual in ancient art. One wonders if the artist...simply misunderstood the types he was copying."https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=131058 The Parthians had supplanted the Seleukids in that part of Western Asia and, at least early on, tried to copy the regional Greek archetypes for the coinage. The Parthian engravers working on these early tets were no doubt referencing Seleukid coin reverses like the Tyches of Demetrios I Soter and the Zeuses of Alexander I Balas. Whether they intended a mash-up, or whether what resulted was, as CNG suggests, based on a misunderstanding - who knows? But it is bizarre!

Thank you, Numisnewbie, for starting this thread. I'm sure that for a lot of us the pathway to collecting artifacts started with collecting coinage. I realize Res et al. may prefer to keep the focus here on the coins ("Ancient Coin Chat," after all) but, oh, how nice it would be to have an artifacts forum. I'll contribute here with two that are neither my favorites nor my nicest - not even close. But they are my most recent pickups. Both were delivered the past week or so. Greek Oil Lamp #3; c. 3rd – 1st century BC; 57.15 mm (w) x 86 mm (l) x 38 mm (h); (2 ¼” x 3 3/8” x 1 ½”) AE Spear Butt (Counterpoise) #05; Western Asia (likely NW Iran); Early first millennium BC; 21.92cm (8.63”)

Nothing wrong with the OP coin. Looks fine.

Outstanding coin with great toning.

My first post here. Bob L. from CCF and CT; Robert L3 from Forum. Figured I'd try something more clever as a handle this time: Kamnaskires. In recent years, my collecting focus has been distilled down to artifacts (pottery and weaponry) and coinage from Elymais - although I maintain a very focused subset from Parthian numismatics too: tets of Vologases II and III. The avatar is simple enough. It illustrates my interests: an anchor from Elymaean coins (the Elymaeans stole the motif from the Seleucids) and a "winged" Marlik arrowhead from NW Iran.