New tool for exploring the Coinage and Mints of Alexander the Great

[Kaleun96]

13 hours ago, lim said:

I collect mostly lifetime coins of Alexander the Great. Thank you, it's a very convenient program.

You may be interested in my collection of early tetradrachm types from Alexander's lifetime mints: https://artemis-collection.com/coin-cabinet/alexanders-lifetime-mints/

My goal isn't to collect his lifetime coinage in general but rather the first types from each of his mints that were operating during his lifetime. Sometimes I can't get the very first type (e.g. if it's very rare) and sometimes it's not really known which was the first type, but I try to find types that belong to the first series of tetradrachms and as early as possible in that series.

I have an example from both Abydos and Miletos there.

[lim]

There is also a controversial issue with Salamis coins, these coins want to be attributed to Ephesus. Because that's where these coins were found in the hoards.

[lim]

My goal is to find one early coin from the lifetime of Alexander the Great from each mint. And during the life of Alexander the Great there were 23 mints. In some places they indicate 26.

Edited November 24, 2024 by lim

[Kaleun96]

5 minutes ago, lim said:

There is also a controversial issue with Salamis coins, these coins want to be attributed to Ephesus. Because that's where these coins were found in the hoards.

I don't believe I've heard this theory, do you have a link to the research that argues this? The lifetime types attributed to Salamis (Price 3139, Price 3142) were found in Egyptian hoards.

I only see one hoard containing Alexander III Salamis tetradrachms that is remotely close to Ephesos, and here it's north of Izmir so still some distance away, and it's estimated burial date was 280 BC. Granted IGCH doesn't have every hoard known but it does have many of the important ones.

[lim]

There is an article. I'll send you the text.

[lim]

Here is a piece of the article. The absence of Ephesus, the most active port in the western part of Asia Minor, is also surprising. Troxell emphasized this point and asked with great doubt whether the group of gold coins attributed to Salamis in Cyprus could be of non-Ephesian origin.?>
What we need to know is whether gold and silver coins with the name and species of Alexander existed in Asia Minor in the fourth century, based on the date that we must to determine, we can really assume that such a coin belonged to this region of the empire. Its constituent series differ from Alexander's coins minted in the same period in Macedonia: Cilicia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Egypt and Babylon. More specific observations, in addition to this general argument, leave no doubt that these series belong to Asia Minor.

[lim]

Alexander the Great
Author:
Le Rider George, Higgins W. E. (William Edward)

[lim]

Here is also the name Ptolemais - Ako. Some even claim that the coins came out early in the Dash. Even if we assume that they went out to Acre, then the name Ptolemais went under Ptolemy 1. He renamed it. And you just have Ptolemais with no time limit.

[kirispupis]

3 hours ago, Kaleun96 said:

Something I find interesting, given how common they are, is just how few mints that opened after 323 BC produced drachmas, and seemingly none of these produced drachmas in Philip III's name. Compare that to tetradrachms, where there's loads of minor mints which opened after 323 BC. Really seems to suggest that the drachm coinage had a specific purpose and/or was limited to certain mints for some reason.

That is interesting, and is something I wasn't aware of.  I recently finished this book - The Bronze Coins of Eastern Mount Ossa in the Thessalian Perioikic Region of Magnesia - and one of her theories is that cities minted some denominations solely because there were two different payments made to soldiers - the misthos (regular wages) and the sitarchia (payment in place of daily rations). The misthos were typically large payments in tetradrachms but the sitarchia were typically bronzes. Perhaps during the time of Alexander the sitarchia were uniformly drachms, but after that period the cities switched to the more convenient bronzes? Just a guess.

[Kaleun96]

1 hour ago, lim said:

Here is a piece of the article. The absence of Ephesus, the most active port in the western part of Asia Minor, is also surprising. Troxell emphasized this point and asked with great doubt whether the group of gold coins attributed to Salamis in Cyprus could be of non-Ephesian origin.?>
What we need to know is whether gold and silver coins with the name and species of Alexander existed in Asia Minor in the fourth century, based on the date that we must to determine, we can really assume that such a coin belonged to this region of the empire. Its constituent series differ from Alexander's coins minted in the same period in Macedonia: Cilicia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Egypt and Babylon. More specific observations, in addition to this general argument, leave no doubt that these series belong to Asia Minor.

Troxell was only talking about the gold coins of Salamis, not all coins attributed to Salamis. She also only suggested Ephesos, her words are "Is it unreasonable even to think of an isolated emission of gold at the major city of Ephesus? The present author's quite unscientific suspicion is that the home of the gold here published was somewhere in Asia Minor, although she is certainly unable to provide evidence supporting any specific mint". As far as I can tell, she doesn't elaborate further on this.

The silver does depend somewhat on the gold's attribution but as far as I know, only the gold's attribution is questioned. The silver tetradrachms do have quite a Cypriot style and the arguments for the gold (i.e. similar engravers, shared style) doesn't apply to the silver.

Can you cite the page from Le Rider's book where you got the quote? I have a copy of the book so would like to read the wider context Le Rider was discussing as the original English translation by Higgins as I'm guessing the part you quoted has been translated a second time.

Edited November 24, 2024 by Kaleun96

[Kaleun96]

1 hour ago, lim said:

Here is also the name Ptolemais - Ako. Some even claim that the coins came out early in the Dash. Even if we assume that they went out to Acre, then the name Ptolemais went under Ptolemy 1. He renamed it. And you just have Ptolemais with no time limit.

Sorry I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

[lim]

Here is your opinion, were the coins issued first in the city of Tyre or Ako?

[lim]

Page 92

[Kaleun96]

24 minutes ago, lim said:

Here is your opinion, were the coins issued first in the city of Tyre or Ako?

Tyre.

17 minutes ago, lim said:

Page 92

Thanks, reading it I see that Le Rider was mainly talking about the lack of drachms at mints like Ephesos and Pergamon and only mentioned the gold coinage of Salamis as it was one particular series of coinage that an author had suggested could belong to Ephesos.

There's no reason at all to assume that the tetradrachms of Salamis should instead be attributed to Ephesos, or even a mint in Asia Minor.

Edited November 24, 2024 by Kaleun96

[Kaleun96]

22 hours ago, kirispupis said:

• It's a bit weird that when I select a mint on the side or on the map, the coins below aren't filtered to that mint. I understand that there are two separate navigations, but it's a bit odd.

Think I've successfully changed this, do you mind giving it a go on your end? It was a deceptively simple 1 line change (set it to "on" on page load) so I'm hoping that has done it!

[kirispupis]

2 hours ago, Kaleun96 said:

Think I've successfully changed this, do you mind giving it a go on your end? It was a deceptively simple 1 line change (set it to "on" on page load) so I'm hoping that has done it!

Verified that it works great! (at least on Windows + Chrome)

[lim]

I also wanted to ask you about the coins Miriander and the city of Iss. Why is it interesting to indicate two cities? And whether there were early releases after the battle of the city of Iss.

[Kaleun96]

1 hour ago, lim said:

I also wanted to ask you about the coins Miriander and the city of Iss. Why is it interesting to indicate two cities? And whether there were early releases after the battle of the city of Iss.

I'm guessing you mean Myriandros and Issos? Price attributes the tetradrachms to Myriandros, though I'm aware of arguments that have suggested Issos (similarly for the Tarsos staters under Mazaios). Tarsos is widely believed to have been the first mint in Asia Minor (and many would argue in all of Alexander's empire) to mint his tetradrachms following the Battle of Issos.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "why is it interesting to indicate two cities?" - who indicated this and who said it was interesting?

[lim]

The description indicates two cities.

[lim]

The source indicates that for some time Alexander the Great fell ill in Tarsus and was treated for some time. And as I understand it, one mint in Tarsus was not enough for the next campaigns. And there are versions that the mint in Issa may have been opened in parallel. And only then did the Sidon mint appear.

[lim]

Another interesting question. You don't happen to know what the letter "A" means on coins. As an example, I gave 3 copies - Tarsus, Arad, Byblos.

[Kaleun96]

38 minutes ago, lim said:

The description indicates two cities.

Which description? Are you referring to Le Rider's book? Please try to be specific with your comments as it can be difficult to know what you're referring to sometimes.

17 minutes ago, lim said:

Another interesting question. You don't happen to know what the letter "A" means on coins. As an example, I gave 3 copies - Tarsus, Arad, Byblos.

The first, second, and fourth coin are all from Arados and have an "AP" monogram, which in Greek would read as "AR" for "Arados". Similar to how ΔA was used for Damaskos or ΣI for Sidon.

The third coin, the one from Tarsos, just used A and B control marks early in its series. The coins were likely struck in parallel, one set of types with an "A" letter beneath the throne and another set of types with a "B" letter beneath the throne. This likely had no meaning of any real importance, simply just a way to designate either separate mint "officina" within Tarsos or some other bureaucratic reason.

Most of the time, the symbols, control letters, or monograms on these coins had no greater meaning that we're aware of, or if there was a greater meaning it is nearly impossible for us to determine.

 

[savitale]

That is a really remarkable tool. Thank you for providing this.

[kirispupis]

BTW, I used the tool for a "real world" investigation and ran into some issues:

- I selected the mint of Sardis under Filter, which worked fine. Then I selected "drachm" from the denomination. I expected to see drachms from Sardis, but instead saw all denominations from Sardis

- The "date opened" and "date closed" fields are problematic. One time they cleared the mint field. At other times they just do nothing.

Ultimately, I was trying to find drachms from Sardis minted in the years 322-320 BCE, but had no luck. 😞

Edited December 5, 2024 by kirispupis

[Kaleun96]

8 hours ago, kirispupis said:

BTW, I used the tool for a "real world" investigation and ran into some issues:

- I selected the mint of Sardis under Filter, which worked fine. Then I selected "drachm" from the denomination. I expected to see drachms from Sardis, but instead saw all denominations from Sardis

- The "date opened" and "date closed" fields are problematic. One time they cleared the mint field. At other times they just do nothing.

For the first one, that's actually expected behaviour as it's a mint-level filter, not type-level, so the idea is that you can see everything produced at a mint that also produced drachms. The reason I made it mint-level is that I was lacking a tool for studying the mints as a whole and PELLA already provides a good tool for looking into individual coins/types from mints. I then didn't want to make the filtering logic confusing by applying it to both the mint and type-level. I could possibly add a secondary set of filters for the gallery below but then it might start getting too cluttered. I could also add a toggle for users to apply the filters to the individual types but how the filters would apply at the type-level could become quite ambiguous.

The second one I'm not sure about, can you describe the steps? If you had filtered on the mints Amphipolis and Abydos where Amphipolis has an "open" date of 336 BC and Abydos an open date of 328 BC and then entered "330" in the first "Date Opened" filter (i.e. the earliest allowable open date), it would exclude Amphipolis and drop it from the list. If you put 330 in the second "Date Opened" filter (i.e. the latest allowable open date), it would exclude Abydos. That would be expected behaviour as well since you're narrowing the filter criteria. An option is to keep the mint in the filter even though it no longer has any matches but then it will be confusing on the map and mint list view because there would be no mint visible.

If the date opened/closed filters don't change anything, it's probably because the value entered was compatible with all of the selected mints, e.g. an earliest "date opened" value of 336 BC would exclude zero mints and effectively do nothing.

It's a bit unintuitive at first having a dual date entry for each of the "opened" and "closed" filters and perhaps that's causing the confusion here. I don't see a good way around it though as I often need to filter on date ranges for when a mint opened or when a mint closed but not necessarily when it was operating. For a example, a basic "325 to 323 BC" filter would capture all mints operating during that time but if you specifically want mints that opened or closed during that period then you need the dual dates.

Quote

Ultimately, I was trying to find drachms from Sardis minted in the years 322-320 BCE, but had no luck. 😞

PELLA is best used for this. I've got thoughts of creating my own but the main purpose of that would be so I can update the attributions and mistakes, I don't think there's any functionality I'd necessarily improve except perhaps allowing to change between OR and AND logical operators when filtering on controls etc.