I wanted to express my point of view on Babylon coins

[lim]

 

1 Coin when Alexander entered Babylon was minted by Mazaios. There are no questions here.

And in 328 BC Mazois suddenly dies. In 327 BC, Alexander appointed Harpalus to manage finances. As soon as Alexander invades India, Harpal, as the main financier of the region, will begin to issue double shekels, which will be similar in weight to the Alexandrian tetradrachma.

 

If you look at the picture above, the letter Г- most likely means the name of Harpalus.

In 325, as soon as Alexander returns from the campaign, his henchman, in order not to be executed for plundering a large amount of money from the treasury, will escape. After this incident, this issue will cease to be minted.

And already in 325 BC, Antimenus will be appointed satrap in Babylon.

He will continue to issue money to the local population, and the coins will be issued under a different name.

The letter A in the picture probably means the name of Antimen.

With this version, everything falls into place.

Who can say what?

Edited November 17, 2024 by lim

[lim]

At auctions and in the catalog, it is simply indicated under the description of these coins 328-311 BC

[lim]

Here is another unusual coin I found on the Internet. Here is the letter Г. The image of the anchor is a Seleucus sign. And a monogram from the bottom of the Babylonian courtyard. This is most likely a transitional type.

Judging by the crossed legs of Zeus, the first coins with crossed legs appeared dated in Sidon in 325 BC. But since the authorities in Babylon hoped that Alexandra would not return from the Indian campaign, Zeus with crossed legs could have released the money a little earlier, as early as 327 BC. And this may prove my version once again.

Edited November 17, 2024 by lim

[Kaleun96]

2 hours ago, lim said:

 

1 Coin when Alexander entered Babylon was minted by Mazaios. There are no questions here.

And in 328 BC Mazois suddenly dies. In 327 BC, Alexander appointed Harpalus to manage finances. As soon as Alexander invades India, Harpal, as the main financier of the region, will begin to issue double shekels, which will be similar in weight to the Alexandrian tetradrachma.

 

If you look at the picture above, the letter Г- most likely means the name of Harpalus.

In 325, as soon as Alexander returns from the campaign, his henchman, in order not to be executed for plundering a large amount of money from the treasury, will escape. After this incident, this issue will cease to be minted.

And already in 325 BC, Antimenus will be appointed satrap in Babylon.

He will continue to issue money to the local population, and the coins will be issued under a different name.

The letter A in the picture probably means the name of Antimen.

With this version, everything falls into place.

Who can say what?

Interesting theories, though I have a few questions as it doesn't quite add up in my mind.

1. Can you explain the connection between the gamma (Г) and Harpalus' (Ἅρπαλος) name?
2. What about the types that occur between Mazaios' issues and Nicolet-Pierre 7-8 (the types with the gamma)? While I think Nicolet-Pierre's chronology is a bit off, her types 1 and 2 definitely occur before the gamma types. Additionally, some of her type 3 may occur before the gamma types, type 4 almost certainly does too as it is die linked with type 2 and type 6, and type 6 with the delta symbol also occurs before the gamma type due to evidence from die linkage and overstrikes.
3. You suggest Nicolet-Pierre 7-8 (i.e. gamma types) were minted from 327 BC onwards but these types feature Ba'al with crossed legs, unlike the earlier types which feature him mostly with uncrossed/parallel legs. If we assume that there is a connection between the pose of Ba'al and the pose of Zeus on Alexander's tetradrachms, we might infer that the change from uncrossed to crossed legs occurred at a similar time. The earliest that we know this happened on the royal coinage (i.e. the Herakles tetradrachms) is 325/4 BC at Sidon and Tyre. At Babylon, we don't see this change occur until 323 BC, likely after Alexander's death as it occurs just before the first type in the name of Philip and in the very last type of Babylon Group III that is in Alexander's name.
   
   Since the lion staters/shekels follow a similar transition in Ba'al's leg position, it would be reasonable to assume that they occurred at a similar time. Since we need to fit in types NP 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 before types 7-8 between Mazaios' death in 328 BC and Alexander's death in 323 BC, it would also make sense from a chronology viewpoint to date NP 7-8 to around 323 BC.
   
   Lastly, the sub-types of type 8 align with the symbols used on the royal tetradrachm coinage of Babylon Group II and Group III. It's difficult to say whether they were following the Group II or Group III emission as the symbols re-occur in each but at the earliest it places the beginning of type 8 coinage at 325/4 BC and more likely 324/3 BC.
    
4. The type you attribute to Antimenus occurs late in Nicolet-Pierre's chronology, it's her type 15, one of the last types prior to the anchor types of Seleukos' 2nd satrapy. Due to die linkage, we know that types 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14 likely occur before type 15. The known examples of type 15 have no die linkages to other types that I'm aware of. So before type 15 can be attributed to Antimenus, we must fit in types 9-14 before it, and none of these types share the same monogram as type 15.
   
   Nicolet-Pierre types 9 and 11, like 7 and 8 before it, also mirror the royal tetradrachm coinage of Babylon Group III. This Group III coinage is all posthumous and marks the very last tetradrachm types in Alexander's name (3689-3692) and the first types in Philip's name (P181-186). Price 3692 and P181 share the same ΛΥ/M symbols found on the lion staters of NP type 9, and Price P186 shares the same monogram as found on NP type 11. This definitively dates NP 9-11 to the same period as Babylon Group 3, which is 323-317 BC.
   
   From what I understand, Antimenus was likely out of a job after Alexander's death, or probably at the latest by the time Seleukos' first satrapy began. So we need to fit in types 7-8 to 324/323 BC, and these two types have the largest emissions of the entire coinage, but also types 9-14, all before Antimenus was out of a job. Not only is the timing an issue but it also raises the question as to why Antimenus would only mint a single type in his name given he must've been treasurer while a handful of these other types were also being minted.
   
   To me, I think the hypothesis that the ANTI monogram stands for Antigonos holds more water. It would push the dating to after Seleukos flees Babylon circa 316 BC and Antigonos takes over. That leaves plenty of time for the preceding types to be minted and also explains the abrupt change in monograms. I think some or all of Nicolet-Pierre's types 16-19 are placed too late in the series and should occur before type 15 based on style, so NP 15 may be the very last type before Seleukos regained control and started the emission new with the anchor symbols.

 

Quote

But since the authorities in Babylon hoped that Alexandra would not return from the Indian campaign, Zeus with crossed legs could have released the money a little earlier, as early as 327 BC

What are the motivations for changing the leg position? Why would they change it on the lion staters but not the royal coinage?

Edited November 17, 2024 by Kaleun96

[lim]

The royal coinage is attributed to the late coinage in Babylon. This is when Alexander returned from an Indian campaign. And the first money that began to circulate in Babylon were coins with a lion. And I expressed my version that since no one expected Alexander to return alive from the campaign, they began to issue coins with a lion with crossed legs. And when Alexander returned from the campaign, he certainly issued money with parallel legs of Zeus. After all, already in 325 BC, money was coming out with crossed legs in Sidon.

[lim]

Then the question arises, why did Zeus coins with crossed legs go around in Sidon in 325, but not in Babylon?

[lim]

Why did I take the coin with the letter Greek G to the Harpalus, because firstly, the double shekel of the coin was actually equated to a tetradrachm and it was logical that the money should have changed at the death of the ruler. And this version was considered not only by me.

Edited November 17, 2024 by lim

[Kaleun96]

3 minutes ago, lim said:

The royal coinage is attributed to the late coinage in Babylon. This is when Alexander returned from an Indian campaign. And the first money that began to circulate in Babylon were coins with a lion. And I expressed my version that since no one expected Alexander to return alive from the campaign, they began to issue coins with a lion with crossed legs. And when Alexander returned from the campaign, he certainly issued money with parallel legs of Zeus. After all, already in 325 BC, money was coming out with crossed legs in Sidon.

But why would they decide to issue coins with crossed legs simply because they didn't think Alexander would return, what is the motivation for this?

Can you respond to the other points I mention about the chronology? Ignoring the crossed legs, it makes no sense for NP types 7-8 to be minted in 327 BC. There is zero evidence for it and plenty of other evidence to suggest it was minted concurrently with the royal coinage.

Quote

Why did I take the coin with the letter Greek G to the Harpalus, because firstly, the double shekel of the coin was actually equated to a tetradrachm and it was logical that the money should have changed at the death of the ruler. And this version was considered not

But what does the G have to do with Harpalus? And Mazaios minted his coins on the double shekel/tetradrachm standard as well. Why not say the fulmen of NP type 1 stands for Harpalus, or the spearhead of type 2, or the HP monogram of type 3, or the delta of type 6? You've arbitrarily selected a symbol and said "this stands for this person because I say so". There is no logic to it and you gloss over every other type that occurs between Mazaios' types from 331-328 BC and NP type 7.

Quote

Then the question arises, why did Zeus coins with crossed legs go around in Sidon in 325, but not in Babylon?

Because Sidon is 1,000km to the west of Babylon and stylistic changes do not occur instantly across mints, it takes time for them to spread. We know this from several attributes such as the hand position of Zeus (palm out vs palm down) as well as the royal title. It could also be said about the footstool.

[lim]

Since there is no literature on these coins, can you demonstrate here in photos in the order you consider by year of issue? Since in the description, even at auction, they are given with a large time interval.

[lim]

And why did I attribute the coin with the Г symbol to Harpalus, because this issue was the most widespread. So the city needed money while Alexander was in India. And under Arrhidaeus and Seleucus, tetradrachms began to be issued en masse and there was no need for coins with a lion.

Edited November 17, 2024 by lim

[Kaleun96]

21 minutes ago, lim said:

Since there is no literature on these coins, can you demonstrate here in photos in the order you consider by year of issue? Since in the description, even at auction, they are given with a large time interval.

There is literature on these, the main one being Nicolet-Pierre's "Argent et or frappés en Babylonie entre 331 et 311 ou de Mazdai à Séleucos" (1999). That's where most of the chronology comes from that is used by auction houses and numismatists. Other authors like Martin Price and Catherine Lorber have also published work mentioning some of the types too (e.g. "Marduk and the Lion" by Iossif & Lorber, 2007).

I've also personally assembled a corpus of 460 examples covering all the pre-anchor types (i.e. from 331-311 BC). Nicolet-Pierre's chronology seems roughly correct according to my die study but there are some unknowns and also some types need to be shuffled about. For example, Nicolet-Pierre 5 with the pentalpha/pentagram should not belong between NP 4 and NP 6, it should belong with NP 16, 17, and 19. But NP 16 should also be split into two types, one early and one late. I also think NP 16, 17, and 19 likely occur before NP 15 based on stylistic analysis.

Apart from that, it is pretty certain types NP 1, 2, 4, and 6 occur before NP 7 and NP 8. We know this from die linkage and overstriking (i.e. an NP 7 example overstruck on an NP 6 example). And as I mentioned in my first reply, we can also be confident that types  NP 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14 occur before NP 15 due to die linkage between these issues and the fact that NP 9 and NP 11 closely follow the symbols of the royal coinage.

Quote

And why did I attribute the coin with the Г symbol to Harpalus, because this issue was the most widespread. So the city needed money while Alexander was in India. And under Arrhidaeus and Seleucus, tetradrachms began to be issued en masse and there was no need for coins with a lion.

But what about the other types that were minted before this? They cannot have been minted under Mazaios and they were minted before NP 7. Also, as it seems most likely, they were minted circa 324/3 BC, around the time Harpalus would've had to flee Babylon. It doesn't rule out that they were minted while he was in Babylon but there's no reason to associate the types with him simply because of the gamma and "the letter Г- most likely means the name of Harpalus" doesn't make sense. It may be a symbol he used but it has no connection to his name as far as I can tell.

The argument about mintage also doesn't hold up when you consider that just as many examples were probably minted between types NP 1 to NP 6 as there were minted between types NP 7 and NP 8. In my corpus, I actually have more examples from types NP 1 to 6 then I do from types NP 7 and 8. I also have more obverse dies from the earlier group (60 obv dies from NP 1 to 6 and 46 obv dies from NP 7 and 8).

I've attached a table from my corpus below showing all the Nicolet-Pierre types ("ref" column), variations/new types ("alt ref" column), and other references where tthe types are also found. Make sure to click on the full size image to be able to read the table, it's too small in the preview below.

[lim]

Thank you very much, I'll read it now. And I’ll try to find these books on the Internet. Are you dealing purely with Babylon?

[Kaleun96]

46 minutes ago, lim said:

Thank you very much, I'll read it now. And I’ll try to find these books on the Internet. Are you dealing purely with Babylon?

I don't think Nicolet-Pierre's work is online but it's published in "Travaux de numismatique grecque offerts a Georges Le Rider". The two Babelon references should be online, as well as Iossif and Lorber's article and BMC Arabia. Though the Babelon, BMC, and Mitchiner references don't talk too much about the series and the former two are very old and outdated.

I'm interested in Babylon when it comes to the Alexander coinage as well as these lion staters but beyond that I don't focus just on this mint. I think a big unanswered question with both the lion staters and royal coinage is whether another mint was involved. I think it's quite possible that is the case for the lion staters but it's difficult to say which types may be attributed to that mint (probably Susa). A few authors have suggested that some types should be attributed to Susa.

[lim]

I don't find a link to Nicolet-Riegge's book for some reason.

[lim]

I've only been working on Alexander the Great coins for half a year. I recently read the book Alexander the Great
Author:

Le Rider George, Higgins W. E. (William Edward)

[lim]

Dealers often refer to several varieties of gold stater as lifetime Susa.

[Kaleun96]

1 hour ago, lim said:

In the table, I do not see that you have assigned types by year of release. What year do you attribute this issue to?

It's too uncertain to attribute the types to specific years, which is why it's not included. We can be reasonably certain that most or all of the "M" types (i.e. those with the Mazaios/Baal legends) were minted between 331-328 BC. Apart from that, we can't be certain when types NP 1 to NP 19 were minted. It seems likely that NP 1 to NP 4 were minted between 328-324 BC, and types NP 6 to NP 11 were minted between 324-317 BC. Then types NP 12 to NP 15 I would place between 317-311 BC. I'm not yet certain where types NP 5, 16, 17, and 19 belong - that's part of what I hope to figure out in my die study. But these are just loose dates for now.

Type NP 4 (no controls) I mention with some hesitancy. A lot of examples attributed as such actually are different types with just very worn or off-centre controls. There's a whole range of variation within types attributed as NP 4, I suspect many of them really are other types but can't be confirmed for certain. There may be a small handful that are "genuine" no-control types but it's difficult to say for sure.

[Kaleun96]

18 minutes ago, lim said:

It turns out that this topic has not been studied.

Which topic is that, the dating? It has been studied, we just can't say for certain when they were minted. It's not unusual to have uncertain date ranges for ancient coins.

Quote

And I also wanted to ask you, for what purposes were these coins issued? I know that a treasure was found in Ecbatana and several thousand talents of gold in darics were found there. Alexander used them to pay off Iranian mercenaries. Silver siglos continued to walk in the same way.

It's not known for certain but some have suggested they may have been used as a local coinage, similar to how Tarsos continued to mint some local coinage under Balakros after Alexander took it over. It's not really clear why they didn't start minting Alexander tetradrachms at this time, perhaps it wasn't needed given all the other mints they had opened.

[lim]

I downloaded what you said: Marduk and the Lion by Joseph and Lorber, 2007).
Everything is painted there and all the coins are sorted by date. Types ∆ and Γ were allegedly produced there in the period between the death of Mazey and Alexander (328-323) BC.

Here is the full text: our agreement does not agree with the agreements of Martin Price and Helene Nicolet-Pierre. Price dated the burial of the treasure from Iraq in 1973 to 32 BC; his sequence for lion staters was unmarked, Mazaeus, ∆, Γ, ギ — ガゾ, pentalpha (geometric shapes, star) and lightning strike. Nicolas-Pierre changed this sequence, listing the questions about lightning, spear and torch as transitional between Mazey and Alexander, and the unmarked, penalfa, ∆ and Γ questions between the death of Mazey and Alexander (328-323).

Edited November 17, 2024 by lim

[lim]

Here in the book it is written about the use of coins with lions. We can add another calculation based on the hypothesis that lion staters were used to pay local workers. Several Cuneiform documents contain information about wages in the Achaemenid, Hellenistic and Parthian periods. A plaque in the British Museum, dated 321, contains data on the wages of workers who cleaned up the rubble during the restoration of Esagila, the temple of Marduk in Babylon: "1/3 of a mine [= 20 shekels] of silver, weight 10 staters." This means that workers on construction projects earned 4 shekels of silver = 2 staters per month or 48 shekels = 24 staters per year. We also know that scribes were paid two shekels per month, and the authors of astronomical diaries 120 shekels per year or 10 shekels per month. R. van der Speck suggested that wages during the reign of the Seleucids ranged from 1 to 4 shekels per month for a simple employee.

[lim]

Then there is a contradiction. Here's an example, a coin from an auction. Here the dating is late 312-280 BC and the coin is the same from G. It may have been dated due to its reduced weight. During Seleucus, coins with a lion began to weigh less.

[lim]

I found another article on the Internet:

https://artemis-collection.com/birthmark-anchor-coins-seleukos-nikator/

[lim]

[Deinomenid]

45 minutes ago, lim said:

I found another article on the Internet:

That's the website of  the person  on this thread who is trying to  help you. Just so you know.

[lim]

Is this his website?