Understanding ancient coins can sometimes get very contentious as those studying the coins disagree. One such battle arose over the coins...

Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos baptizes Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus from a 12th or 13th century illuminated manuscript known as the...

The drachms of Cappadocia are the subject of today's post. I have three drachms of Ariarathes IX dated to regnal years A, B, and Δ. Their portraits could hardly be more different: a boy-king, a heavier head from a different hand, and two years later the unmistakable features of Mithridates VI. Read in isolation the coins seem inconsistent; read against Otto Mørkholm’s reconstruction of Cappadocia’s coinage they narrate a single political arc. Die-links, hoard evidence, and

I've always had difficulty passing up a Salus reverse (Goddess of Health) , and even more so in this year of COVID-19. This coin is from...

Base of a funerary kouros, Athens 510-500 BC, with wrestlers – National Archaeological Museum Greece There are coins from Nicaea,...

This year continues to add more coins of Asia Minor than Roman republic to my collection. Today a coin from Phrygia, Laodikeia - also...

Aristotle lived on Mytilene during the period in which these coins were minted. The dates are variously reported, somewhere between...

Prusias II, King of Bithynia, Reduced to Begging (Public Domain Image, with thanks to the Getty Museum Open Content Program) In a...

Suetonius, Julius Caesar, 79.3 The Sibylline books were consulted by Romans from the time of the republic through to the end of the...

With the evolving global pandemic, it seems unlikely that much leisure travel will be part of my near term plans. The phrase, "may you...

In the words of Tom Petty, “even the losers get lucky sometimes”. You have to love an auction where you lose and still get the coin you ...

What do Perseus, St. Paul, and Antoninus Pius have in common? My coin of interest this week is another AE from Asia Minor, the Roman...

This "Greek" coin from Pergamon is the coin of interest for this week. Mysia, Pergamon, 159-133 BC, Æ (16.6mm,5.36g, 12h) Obv: Helmeted...

As I was updating this post, written earlier this year, I stumbled on a 2014 blog entry with a photo that seems to be the two votive...

Rare is not rare in Roman Provincials, and affordable condition and rarity are benefits of wandering off the most well worn paths of...

Mên, illustrated in this marble Roman relief from the 2nd Century AD, is the Moon god of Roman Anatolia, perhaps connected with the...

The depiction of Artemis and portrait of Zeus on this 14mm, 2.0g, AE coin were the reason I purchased the coin. It wasn’t until it...

Sinope, Paphlagonia in Northern Anatolia is on the southern shores of the Black Sea and it is still a city today in modern Türkiye see...

This story of the first diplomatic contact between Rome and Parthia, is illustrated with three coins. The story begins around 101 BC when...

“The cistophorus, with its writhing serpents and over-elaborate ornamentation, is perhaps the ugliest coin in the Greek series. ...