THE COINAGE OF ROMAN ALEXANDRIA
When Octavian took possession of Egypt in 30 B.C., he found
an established currency system with traditions going back
nearly three hundred
years. The principal denomination was a silver tetradrachm
of some 13-14 grams, bearing the regnal date of the current
Ptolemy. Until
the middle of the first century B.C. this coin had been struck
from fine silver; however during the last twenty years of
Ptolemaic rule it was debased to a silver content of only
25%. The tetradrachm
was supplemented by a fractional currency in bronze, which
had formerly included some coins of very large module.
An extreme monotony
of types prevailed, with a royal portrait the dominant obverse
type and reverses usually occupied by eagles. The most remarkable
feature of the Ptolemaic currency system was its deliberate
isolation from the rest of the Mediterranean economy: foreign
currency was
not permitted to enter Egypt, and local currency was not
permitted to leave. This closed system provided several
advantages. Currency
exchange at the borders yielded profits from both entering
and departing travelers. Efficient recovery of specie
from circulation,
through currency exchange and through the poll tax, often
enabled government to meet its expenses with older coinage,
rather than
through new issues of currency as was the common practice
in antiquity.
These
tight controls made it possible to regulate the monetary supply
with an eye to ensuring price
stability, a benefit
not enjoyed by
populations outside Egypt.
The
coinage of Roman Alexandria is in many respects a continuation
of the Ptolemaic system, coordinated
with the coinage of
Rome. The degree and nature of this coordination were only
dimly
perceived
by the numismatic giants who published the standard works
on the Alexandrian series in the earlier part of the twentieth
century.
The closed nature of the Egyptian currency system prohibited
such obvious sorts of correlation as heavy minting to contribute
to the
imperial war chest. Yet current researchers are discovering
that Egypt often bore the brunt of imperial profligacy.
Initially
Augustus adopted the copper denominations of Cleopatra VII,
in fact restriking her flans. Later he introduced smaller copper
denominations in an attempt to reform the relation of bronze
to silver.
In
A.D. 20 Tiberius revived
the production of tetradrachms, which had lapsed for
half a century. Like their Ptolemaic antecedents, his tetradrachms
bore regnal dates,
based on the Alexandrian calendar, whose year commenced
in 29 August (or 30 August following leap years).
The
dating of Alexandrian coins' which persisted to the end of
the series' has proved a great boon to modern
scholars investigating the chronologies of some of
the more obscure
imperial figures.
Tiberius
established another important principle in fixing
the silver content of his tetradrachms as equivalent to
that of the
Roman denarius.
The resulting alloy is usually described as billon.
Nero's
debasement of the Roman denarius after the great fire of A.D.
64 was mirrored in the Alexandrian coinage:
His last
four years witnessed
an intense outpouring of tetradrachms, actually
a recoining of the existing currency supply (including some high-quality
Ptolemaic tetradrachms
still in circulation) to the new denarius standard,
viz. 2.19 grams of silver per tetradrachm. In this
process
a considerable quantity
of silver was recovered and exported to Rome, where
it enlarged the flood of denarii minted to finance
the emperor's
building
program.
The
next reform of the Roman coinage was that of Domitian in late
A.D. 82. Precious metal coinage
was restored to its pre-Neronian weight and fineness, apparently
a fruit of the emperor's
attachment
to traditional
values. No such
restoration has been documented for his Egyptian
coinage. Indeed, the upgrading of Domitian's
Roman coinage may
somehow be connected
with extremely low production of Alexandrian
billon during his reign. Domitian did, however, set in
place a full
range of five aes denominations,
each corresponding to a denomination of the
Roman coinage.
Each
of these Alexandrian bronze denominations had been minted by
one or more emperors before
him, but
Domitian
was the
first to produce
the full range. This systematization of the
Alexandrian currency would seem to reflect
the emperor's
compulsive personality
and his interest in monetary matters. His
system was adequate to serve for
approximately a century, with various adjustments
in focus and balance.
The
reign of Trajan inaugurated a new phase for the Alexandrian coinage,
a phase
in which bronze played an enhanced role. This was
especially true for the large drachm denomination,
the
equivalent of
the Roman
sestertius,
which also flourished under the Antonine
emperors. The minting of tetradrachms was
modest throughout
Trajan's reign, reflecting
financial
straits that led the emperor, in A.D. 107,
to reduce the Roman denarius to the standard
of
Vespasian
and initiate
a massive
recoining of
the existing currency. It was in this same
year that Alexandria
inaugurated its tremendous series of bronze
drachms with their richly pictorial
types. Their dazzling variety tends to
mask the fact that levels of production were actually
quite low.
We may, in
fact, be
dealing with frequent special issues supplementing
the limited substantive
issues of billon. The occasions for these
special issues cannot be recognized from
their types.
At Rome A.D.
107 witnessed no less than
six special issues, focusing on the celebration
of Trajan's decennalia and his triumph
for the
Second Dacian War.
Thereafter, however, the
production of special issues fluctuated
at Rome, with
some years having none, whereas at Alexandria
the number of
drachm reverses
remained consistently high. Christiansen
has suggested that the emphasis on bronze
coinage
was made possible
by improved
exploitation of Egypt's
copper mines under Trajan. At any rate
it is now clear from hoard evidence that the
bronze
currency,
like
the billon,
was
used primarily
by city dwellers and was not minted to
provide a medium of exchange for the countryside,
as
Milne
hypothesized.
The
patterns established by Trajan continued under Hadrian, but with
more abundant production
and
a proliferation of tetradrachm reverses
rivalling the repertory of the drachms.
This again seems
consistent with the emperor's policies
for Rome, for Hadrian's coinage
presents the most varied and interesting
typology of the entire Roman imperial
series.
Under
Marcus Aurelius output at Alexandria began to decline, and in
A.D. 176/7 the
tetradrachm suffered its first
debasement since
Nero, its weight reduced to c. 11.90
grams and
its
silver content to only 0.92 grams.
The new, inferior alloy is
termed potin.
As in the time of Nero, the debasement
of the tetradrachm parallels a debasement
of the denarius at Rome, but there
was no
immediate recoining in Egypt. That
process was left for
Commodus, who again
debased the
denarius at Rome but at Alexandria
merely increased the minting of tetradrachms
so as to recover
the excess silver
from the
existing
stock of coins. Bronze, meanwhile,
fell into neglect and indeed ceased to for
a regular
pa t of the
currency system
after this
reign.
The
surplus silver accumulated at Alexandria through Commodus' recoining
probably
provided the bullion
for the rare Alexandrian
denarii minted
by Pescennius Niger and Septimius
Severus, which were intended for circulation
outside Egypt as
they prosecuted
their
civil war. The
production of tetradrachms, on the
other hand, was very feeble under
Severus, leading
to the
great rarity-of
Alexandrian
coins from his
reign. Numismatists have recorded
a number of obverse dies that were used
over more
than one
regnal year,
as well
as
reverse dies used
for several different members of
the imperial family, in evidence of the
exceedingly low level of mint
activity. This parsimony
was one aspect of Severus' war finances,
which also involved heightened
production from other eastern mints
and yet another debasement of the
denarius in A.D.
194/5. Coin
production at Alexandria
continued
exiguous under Severus' son and successor
Caracalla.
The
Alexandria mint revived under Elagabalus, but for the remainder
of the third
century its only
regular
product would be tetradrachms.
The module and silver content of
the tetradrachm were repeatedly
reduced until it became indistinguishable
from a copper coin. For its part,
the original bronze
coinage clearly
emerged
as commemorative
in character: Isolated issues of
drachms were struck for the decennalia
of Severus
Alexander;
for the
celebrations of Rome's
millennium in
years 5 and 6 of Philip I; in year
12 of Gallienus; and in the brief
joint reign
of Aurelian and
Vabalathus. The
distinctive
Alexandrian
series came to an end in A.D. 296/7
in
the course of Diocletian's currency
reforms.
Thereafter Alexandria functioned
as one of the regular imperial
mints,
producing
the standard late Roman
denominations.
The
reverse types of the Alexandrian coinage fall
into two broad categories—imperial
propaganda, expressed through
the visual language familiar
to
us from the regular Roman coinage,
and local types. The imperial
propaganda rarely provides
the sort of commentary on current
events that makes the
Roman coinage so topical and
fascinating. The earliest imperial
propaganda at Alexandria, as
at Rome, stressed
the dynastic legitimacy of the
Julio-Claudian emperors, soon
expanding to flatter wives who
were not similarly
honored in
the capital.
Dynastic themes never lost their
appeal and reappeared whenever
an emperor
had sons or a designated successor
whom he wished to advertise.
However
the commonest
approach to imperial
propaganda entailed
the use of
personifications of the imperial
virtues, given Greek names but
usually employing the same
iconography
as at Rome. In the first
two centuries
of the principate these personifications
often reflected the type selection
at the capital,
though their impact
was diluted
by the
far greater scope given to types
of local interest. But from the
reign of Maximinus I onward the
selection of personifications
appears
to have ossified, with the same
small repertory
repeated almost automatically,
and parallels with the Rome
coinage are more likely
the be the result
of chance than of policy. In
the 280s true parallels began
to appear again, and under
the reign of Diocletian
and his colleagues
the
typology moved toward a reintegration
with the propaganda themes of
the coinage
empire-wide. The culmination
of this development
was the abolition of the Romano-Egyptian
coinage as an unique currency.
After A.D.
297 the Alexandria mint operated
as one of many provincial mints
producing an essentially
uniform imperial coinage.
It
is the characteristic Alexandrian
types, with their exotic flavor,
that lend real
charm to
the Romano-Egyptian
coinage.
Counted among
such types are Greco-Egyptian
deities and cult symbols, centering
on
the myth cycle
of Sarapis;
depictions
of the Nile, his
consort Euthenia, and their
cult symbols or related paraphernalia
(such
as the Nilometer which measured
the annual innundation); the
personification of Alexandria;
representations
of
local architecture, especially
the great
lighthouse
of Alexandria;
a few ancient Egyptian
deities; and native animals.
These multifarious types were
not employed
to
appeal alternately to the Greek
or Egyptian elements of the
population, as Milne
so quaintly theorized.
Rather they are
an expression of
local piety and patriotism,
much like like their counterparts
on Greek
imperial
coinage
elsewhere.
During
the Antonine period the fascinating repertory
of
Alexandrian
types was
enriched by several
special bronze
series of great
interest to collectors. One
drachm series, issued principally
in
the reign of Antoninus Pius,
depicts
the Labors
of Heracles. The great Zodiac
series was minted
in the eighth
year of
Antoninus Pius (A.D. 145/6),
probably to commemorate the
commencement of the Sothaic
Cycle
in A.D. 139. This rare event,
which occurred
only every 1461 years,
was marked by the by coincidence
of Egypt's two traditional
calendars, the Vague
or civil calendar
and the Sothaic
or fixed calendar. The
coin series itself however
is based upon Greek astrology.
Its
drachms
bear
types
symbolizing the sun, the
moon, and the seven
planets known
to the ancients, passing
through the signs of the Zodiac. Two
rare varieties
depict
the
entire
Zodiac,
or two
Zodiacs with
their signs
in conjunction, clearly alluding
to the coincidence of the
two Egyptian calendars.
The
offering below includes an impressive selection from
the
Zodiacal series
with several specimens
in outstanding state for their types.
The
last special series, the Nome Coinage, names
individual nomes
or administrative
districts on the reverses
of
its bronze coins.
Early students of the
Romano-Egyptian coinage interpreted these
coins as actual issues
of the
nomes. But
eventually the identity
of style
and fabric persuaded
observers that these coins were struck
at Alexandria,
and
this perception
has recently
been supported
by the discovery
of shared dies. The traditional
separation of the Nome
Coinage is nevertheless
retained even
in many
scholarly
works, as
it is here
for the convenience of collectors.
Nome
Coins appeared for the first time in the eleventh year of Domitian,
and thereafter were
produced only in specific
years,
with major,
extensive issues in year 11 of Hadrian and in year 8 of Antoninus
Pius. Hadrian's year 11 emission stands out not only for
its scope-some fifty nomes or towns are named—but also for
adapting the special issue concept to small bronze denominations.
The
typology of the Nome Coinage at first glance appears rather colorless.
Yet behind these formulaic types lies the rich mythology
of ancient
Egypt. Repelled by the half-animal monstrosities of the Egyptian
pantheon, the Romans generally depicted the patron deities
of the nomes in anthropomorphic form, with any theromorphic
elements converted
into animal companions, typically held in the hand. For the
smallest denomination (the dichalkon) this symbolic animal,
or alternatively
another attribute held by the god, becomes the type. The
present offering of Nome Coinage is one of the most extensive
on the
market in recent years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In
addition to the introductions in BMC and Milne, the above essay
draws heavily on Erik Christiansen, The Roman Coins
of Alexandria:
Quantitative Studies (Aarhus, 1988), 2 vols. The author
was unfortunately unable to consult Marcus Weder, "Romische
Munzen und Munzstatten des 3. Jahrhunderts VI," SM
131 (1983), p. 67ff., treating Aurelian's reform at Alexandria.