Coins of the Bosporan Kingdom

The Coin

The Bosporan Kingdom occupied both shores of the Kerch Strait, in the eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula. It ran as a client kingdom of Rome for roughly four centuries, and its coinage records that relationship in two ways: Roman emperors appear on the reverses, and the kings' own titles advertise their loyalty.

Modern catalogues call this piece a sestertius, borrowing the Roman name for a large bronze. It is lighter than the sestertii struck at Rome in the same years, so the Roman label describes the shape of the coin more than its standard.

The reverse carries the letters MH inside a wreath. These are Greek numerals: M is 40 and H is 8. Together they give 48, and the coin is a mark-of-value piece worth 48 bronze units.

Bosporan Kingdom, Sauromates I (AD 93/94 to 123/124) Æ 48 units, struck circa AD 117/118 to 123

Obv: Diademed and draped bust right

Rev: MH (mark of value, 48) within wreath

Sauromates I

His full name and titles run: Tiberius Julius Sauromates Philokaisar Philorhomaios Eusebes. The Greek epithets translate as "friend of Caesar, friend of Rome, the pious." Bosporan kings used the Roman gentilicium Tiberius Julius from the reign of Aspourgos onward, a standing declaration of Roman citizenship and Roman favour.

His name most likely derives from the Sauromatae, a Sarmatian people of the steppe north and east of the kingdom. Inscriptions from Bosporan cities record his campaigns against the Scythians of the Crimean interior, who were the principal land threat during his reign.

The ancestry is the interesting part. Sauromates I descended from Mark Antony, who was his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, through Antonia, Pythodoris of Pontos, Antonia Tryphaina, and Gepaipyris. For the full family tree see Romans & Crocodiles.

Through other lines he descended from three Macedonian Greek commanders of the generation of Alexander the Great: Antigonos I Monophthalmos, Seleukos I Nikator, and Antipatros. Antigonos and Seleukos served under Alexander on campaign. Antipatros governed Macedon as regent while Alexander was in Asia, so he served the king without serving in the field.

He also descended from Mithradates VI of Pontos and his sister-wife Laodike, and from the Bosporan king Asandros.

Kotys II and a heavy 48-unit piece

Kotys II, son and successor of Sauromates I, continued the 48-unit denomination. Over his reign the weight of these pieces falls to roughly 10 g. The example below weighs 14.66 g. Of the nine examples I have been able to trace on ACSearch, the second heaviest weighs 12.82 g, nearly two grams lighter. On that evidence it is the heaviest recorded specimen I know of, though ACSearch records auction appearances rather than the full surviving population.

Bosporan Kingdom, Kotys II (AD 123 to 132) Æ 48 units (14.66 g, 27 mm)

Obv: ΒΑCΙΛΕΩC ΚΟΤΥΟC, bust of Kotys II right, trident before [check whether the legend uses lunate or square sigma on this specimen]

Rev: M-H, Nike holding a palm branch and a wreath

Ref: MacDonald, Bosporus 434/2 Brown-green patina, VF

Provenance: former stock of the Munich dealer Karl Kress, before 1986

Roman emperors on the reverse

By the third century AD the Bosporan stater carries the king on the obverse and the reigning Roman emperor on the reverse. The arrangement states the political relationship in the most direct terms available to a die engraver.

Dates on these coins use the Bosporan era, which begins in 297/296 BC. To convert, subtract 297 from the era year.

Bosporan Kingdom, Rheskouporis IV (circa AD 242/243 to 276/277), with Philip I Billon stater (7.2 g, 20.3 mm), dated BE 541 (AD 244/245)

Obv: BACIΛЄѠC PHCKOΠOPIΔO, diademed and draped bust of Rheskouporis IV right

Rev: Laureate and draped bust of Philip I right, club before, AMΦ (date) below

Ref: MacDonald 602; Anokhin 691; Stanislavskii 640

I bought this one on eBay years ago as a silver stater, then decided it was electrum on the strength of a faint gold tone in the surface. The metallurgy turns out to be more interesting than either guess.

The Bosporan stater lost its gold between the reigns of Rheskouporis III (AD 211/212 to 228/229) and Kotys III (AD 227/228 to 233/234), passing from gold and electrum to silver, then to billon, then by the end of the third century to copper. What replaced the electrum was a silver-copper alloy carrying a gold remainder, because the mint was melting down old electrum staters to make the new ones.

Abramzon and his co-authors measured 469 staters of this king from the Kerch 1988 hoard. For AD 244/245 they report 40 coins, of which 29 assayed above 50 percent silver and four reached 77 to 89 percent. Staters of AD 242/243 to 248/249 carry 1 to 6 percent gold, averaging about 1.5 percent, which the authors attribute to the recycling of the earlier gold coinage. The steep decline comes later: 30 percent silver through AD 248 to 250, then 12 to 16 percent from AD 251 to 253.

So a stater of 244/245 falls in the best years of the alloy. The gold tone is most likely the 1 to 6 percent gold actually present in the metal. Calling it electrum overstates the case, since electrum is a gold-silver alloy and this metal is roughly half copper. Whether this particular coin counts as silver or as billon depends on where it sits in a range that runs from 21 to 89 percent silver within a single year, and only an XRF reading of the coin itself would settle it.

Bosporan Kingdom, Rheskouporis IV, with Gallienus Billon stater (7.7 g, 20 mm), dated BE 561 (AD 264/265)

Obv: BACIΛЄωC PHCKOVΠOPIΔO, diademed and draped bust of Rheskouporis right, trident to right

Rev: Laureate and draped bust of Gallienus right, I to right, AΞΦ (date) below

Ref: MacDonald 620/3; Frolova p. 161 and plates XV to XVI; Anokhin 712a

Thothorses

Thothorses is known from his coins. No literary source names him, and no inscription so far published records him, so it is an open question whether he belonged to the Tiberian-Julian dynasty or took the throne as a Sarmatian usurper.

Bosporan Kingdom, Thothorses (AD 285/286 to 308/309) Æ stater (7.37 g, 19 mm), dated BE 583 (AD 286/287)

Obv: Diademed and draped bust of Thothorses right, monogram before, ΓΠΦ (date) below

Rev: Diademed and draped bust of a Roman emperor right

Bosporan Kingdom, Thothorses Billon stater (7.31 g, 20 mm), dated BE 596 (AD 299/300).

Obv: ΒΑCΙΛΕωC ΡΗСΚΟΥΠΟΡΙΔΟС, bust of king Thothorses right, draped and wearing ribbon, 3 pellets to inner right field.

Rev: bust of Roman emperor right (Diocletian), 3 pellets behind, ςqΦ below, tamga-monogram to right.

Ref: Frolova pl. 38, 19; MacDonald-647/1; cf. Anokhin Pl. 37, 744c. Rarity: Extremely Rare.

The two Thothorses pieces sit on either side of the end of Bosporan silver. Abramzon and his co-authors found that staters of AD 286/287 were struck in copper and given a silver coating, with only 4 to 11 percent silver in the alloy, and they identify AD 286/287 as the last year of silvered staters. On that finding the 286/287 coin above began life with a silver surface over a copper core, and the 299/300 coin is copper throughout.

The emperor on the reverse of these two staters is usually identified as Diocletian on the basis of date.

References

• Struve, V. V., ed. Corpus Inscriptionum Regni Bosporani. Moscow and Leningrad: Nauka, 1965.

• Abramzon, Mikhail G., Yuliya Y. Efimova, Natalya V. Koptseva, Irina A. Saprykina, and Tatyana N. Smekalova. The Metallurgy of Bosporan Silver Coinage: Third Century AD. Colloquia Antiqua 37. Leuven, Paris, and Bristol, CT: Peeters, 2023. Publisher page.

• Anokhin, V. A. Monetnoe delo Bospora [Монетное дело Боспора, The Coinage of the Bosporus]. Kiev: Naukova Dumka, 1986.

• Frolova, N. A. The Coinage of the Kingdom of Bosporus, AD 69 to 238. British Archaeological Reports International Series 56. Oxford: BAR, 1979. Reviewed in Revue numismatique 6, no. 21 (1979): 236.

• Frolova, N. A. The Coinage of the Kingdom of Bosporus, AD 242 to 341/342. Translated by H. Bartlett Wells. British Archaeological Reports International Series 166. Oxford: BAR, 1983.

• MacDonald, David. An Introduction to the History and Coinage of the Kingdom of the Bosporus: Including the Coinage of Panticapaeum (with "Apollonia" and "Myrmecium"), Phanagoria, Gorgippia, Sindicus Limen or the Sindoi, Nymphaeum, Theodosia, and the Kings of the Cimmerian Bosporus. Classical Numismatic Studies 5. Lancaster, PA, and London: Classical Numismatic Group, 2005.