Unknown Ancient Coin

[coinsareawesome]

Hey guys! My cousin bought this coin at a yard sale a few days ago and she wants to know more about it. I've been trying to use specific keywords such as Domitian and phoenix (since that's what the reverse picture appears to be). However, I have not been able to find a decent match, and I was hoping you guys would be able to help me out yet again.

 

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[Red-Coat]

This may help.

Just for clarity, there was more than one ‘Domitian’ and the Emperor referred to here was Titus Flavius Domitianus, born AD 51 and Emperor from AD 81 until his death in AD 96.

As said in the information on the ticket, the coin is from the Egyptian part of the Roman Empire (Egypt had been a Roman province since 30 BC) and would likely have been minted locally at Alexandria. Roman coins of course didn’t carry dates as such, but in some cases they do have a ‘reign year’ which enables them to be precisely dated. For Domitian’s coins minted at Alexandria, they carry letters that relate to this. I can’t read them from your pictures but, if the information with your coin correctly identifies it as ‘Year 4’ then it will have been minted in AD 84/5.

The information you have says it’s an ‘obel’, which is a mis-spelling of ‘obol’ by whoever wrote the ticket. Roman provincial coins were often aligned to prevailing local currencies, so in this case the coin is presumed to align to the obol of the Greek-speaking part of the Empire. There were six obols to the drachma. One obol would get you six pints of wine and three obols was the standard going rate for a prostitute.

Your information also says the reverse has a ‘griffon’ (more usually spelled ‘griffin’). It’s a matter of debate what you call it, since the imagery of griffins and sphinxes has similar derivations and some sources describe it as a ‘sphinx’. The latter has a more long-standing association with Egypt and is depicted both with and without wings on Domitian’s coins and elsewhere. The Romans were pretty tolerant of foreign religions and their iconography as long as they didn’t interfere with public order; so the worship of Egyptian deities flourished in Domitian’s time and Egyptian imagery on coins was seen as an appeasement to a population under the rule of Rome.

The reverse of your coin (shown here in the correct orientation and with a bit of enhancement) is similar to the one I have shown alongside. There were many variations, but it’s a griffin/sphinx with one foreleg resting on a wheel. This one I’m showing is from reign year six of Domitian’s rule and so was minted in AD 86/7.

 

[Red-Coat]

A little more about the iconography... extracted from the Getty Museum website:

The image of a griffin supporting one of its forepaws on a wheel appears in Roman art by the first century AD. The wheel, a symbol of the cyclical movement of human fortune, and the winged griffin are both distinctive attributes of Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, who is also often represented with wings… This motif also occurs on coins of Alexandria dating to the reign of the emperor Domitian (AD 81–96)… The particular image of a griffin resting its paw on a wheel, typically seated at the foot of Nemesis, is so pervasive that it eventually became a symbol for the goddess herself…. Representations of the griffin with a wheel unaccompanied by Nemesis… are particularly common in North Africa and the eastern periphery of the Roman Empire.

As I mentioned, Rome was tolerant of foreign religions as long as they didn't interfere with public order (or the collection of taxes). They were even more tolerant when the iconography could be fused with their own if gods or goddesses had parallel equivalents to their own beliefs.

 

[coinsareawesome]

Thank you so much Red-Coat!