The Coins from Oxyrhynchus

THE COINS FROM OXYRHYNCHUS

By J.G. MILNE

The coins found during the six seasons of excavation at Oxyrhynchus by Drs. Grenfell and Hunt were all examined and so far as possible identified year by year. A detailed list of the individual specimens may perhaps be replaced by a summary of the evidence which the finds afford and some of the conclusions which may be derived therefrom in relation to the history of Graeco-Roman Egypt.

It must be remembered that these coins all came from the rubbish-mounds, and therefore represent the casual losses of the Oxyrhynchites in their daily life. Naturally no gold coins were turned up, and very few of the debased silver tetradrachms of the first and second centuries A.D. ; a man who lost a valuable piece of money would search diligently till he found it. But bronze pieces, and the late third century tetradrachms which were little better than bronze, might be dropped and never missed before they were swept up with other rubbish and tipped out on the dust-heaps. The finds may accordingly be taken as fairly representative of the coinage of lower values circulating in Oxyrhynchus.

The most convenient division of the material for consideration will be in four groups—(A) Ptolemaic ; (B) Roman to the time of the "reform" of Diocletian, covering the period during which a special currency, based on the the tetradrachm as the standard unit, was struck for Egypt ; (C) Roman from Diocletian to Justinian, when the Egyptian monetary system was supposed to be assimilated to that of the rest of the Empire ; (D) Byzantine from Justinian to the Arab conquest.

(A.) The Ptolemaic finds do not possess any features of special interest. There were in all 62 coins of this period, of which 2 were silver tetradrachms. The classification of Ptolemaic bronze is so uncertain that it would be of little value to group the speceimens under reigns without full descriptions of the types : but there is a fairly clear distinction between the issues of the third century B.C. and those of the two following centuries : and only 7 of the coins found are referable to the earlier period. On the other hand, there are 9 examples of the easily identifiable issues of Cleopatra VII : and the 2 tetradrachms both belong to what is generally accepted as the last regular series of Ptolemaic silver. Like the papyri, the coins found suggest that the rubbish-mounds explored did not begin to accumulate till the later part of the Ptolemaic rule.

Only one coin from outside Egypt belonging to this period was found—a small bronze coin of Kos of the third century (type B.M.C. 86-98). This is quite natural : foreign bronze would not be current under the Ptolemies, and there would be no merchants from overseas at Oxyrhynchus to drop their own coins. It is perhaps only by chance that this one coin belongs to a place which the relations of the early Ptolemies were particularly close, and which was for a time under their sway.

(B) The Roman coins of the first three centuries, so far as they are identifiable, belong to the following reigns :—

	Billon	Bronze		Billon	Bronze
Augustus	—	14	Commodus	2	2
Tiberius	1	4	Caracalla	—	1
Caligula	—	2	Sev. Alexander	6	3
Claudius	1	25	Gordian III	1	—
Nero	8	3	Philip	8	—
Galba	—	1	Gallus	4	—
Otho	1	—	Valerian	4	—
Vitellius	1	—	Gallienus	8	1
Vespasian	—	26	Claudius II	9	—
Domitian	—	11	Aurelian	55	—
Trajan	1	20	Tacitus	3	—
Hadrian	3	48	Probus	69	—
Antoninus Pius	3	37	Carus & sons	32	—
M. Aurelius	1	10	Diocletian & colleagues	143	—

As has already been note, the bulk of the finds belonging to the two first centuries of Roman rule, during which a bronze coinage was regularly issued at Alexandria for local currency, are of this bronze. The few billon tetradrachms are fairly evenly spread over this period : the exceptional number of examples of Nero is explained by the enormous issues of his reign, which form the chief part of hoards for over a century. The proportion of bronze is really larger than appears from the figures above, since all the early billon coins could be identified, while there were 115 bronze which were too worn to be assigned to any reign, though they were clearly Alexandrian of the first or second century.

In addition to the billon and bronze coins, a large number of leaden pieces occured. These I described fully in Num. Chron. 1908, pp. 287 ff., and the conclusioins there stated have been generally accepted—viz : that these pieces were a token coinage of low value, issued approximately between 180 and 260, to replace the bronze, which ceased to appear in any quantity after the former date. The tetradrachms still circulated, and there must have been something to represent the lower denominations, obols and chalki, which are shown by the papyri to have been in regular use. If these tokens, of which over 300 were found, are included with the coins, they bring up the average of specimens between Commodus and Gallienus to that of the earlier and later periods.

After Gallienus, the tetradrachm rapidly deteriorated in intrinsic and also in current value : and this depreciation is reflected in the much greater numbers that occurred in the mounds. A tetradrachm was no longer worth looking for, if lost.

It is important to notice that during this period very few coins other than Alexandrian seem to have circulated at Oxyrhynchus. It has been supposed that the Roman imperial coinage was current in Egypt : but, although it was probably legal tender, there is no evidence from finds, apart from one or two hoards from the vicinity of Alexandria, that it was used in any quantity. The mounds of Oxyrhynchus only produced two sestertii of Severus Alexander and one of Philip to represent the imperial issues before the time of Gallienus : the depreciated bronze denarii of that and later reigns were commoner, two of Gallienus, two of Aurelian, seven of Probus, five of Carus and his sons, and nine of the pre-reform issues of Diocletian and Maximian having been found. It would appear therefore that it was only late in the third century that imperial coins began to drift into Egypt : and this may be connected to some extent with the breaking down of the isolation of Egypt as a province.

This isolation, which was due to the deliberate policy formulated by Augustus, is marked by the absence of colonial and provincial, as well as imperial, Roman coins. Even if there had been a difficulty in securing the acceptance in Egypt of the ordinary issues of Rome with their unfamiliar standard and acceptance in Egypt of the ordinary issues of Rome with their unfamiliar standard and appearence, it might have been expected that coins more closely resembling the Alexandrian—e.g. the tetradrachms of the Syrian mints, which in size, finess and style are almost identical with those Alexandria—would have passed current. But I am not aware that any examples of these have been found in Egypt : and Syrian bronze coins of this period, all of bronze : one of Nicaea of Antoninus Pius (Recueil 78), one of Cyprus of Caracalla (B.M.C. 62), and one of Damascus of Philip (B.M.C. 23). These were probably chance importations : the first-named was pierced, and in view of the reverse type—Dionysos Ktistes—it may possibly have been worn as an amulet by its former possessor.

All the coins found belonging to the next period are bronze, of the following fulers :—

Diocletian (post-reform)	19	Constantine II	50
Maximus	41	Constantius II	145
Constantinus I	11	Constans	57
Galerius	10	Constantius Gallus	24
Maximin	18	Julian	6
Severus	2	Jovian	2
Maxentius	1	Valentinian I	19
Licinius	63	Valens	13
Licinius jr.	23	Gratian	15
Constantine I	240	Valentinian II	15
Martinian	1	Theodosius	51
Crispus	17	Arcadius	23
Delmatius	2	Honorius	9

In addition to these 34 barbarous imitations of late fourth century coins, and 1 Axumite coin, should be mentioned.

The first point of interest in relation to this period iis in the mintages of the specimens found. The "monetary reform" of Diocletian assimilated the currency of Egypt to that of the rest of the Empire : and the mint of Alexandria, in common with those of the other provinces, struck a uniform coinage, with Latin legends and based on the Roman standard, which might pass anywhere in the Roman world. the coins were regularly marked with the name of the mint from which they issued : and thus it is possible to trace to some extent the circulation of money between the various provinces. Nearly all the fourth century mints of the Empire are represented at Oxyrhynchus : naturally the Western issues are the more scanty. The inflow of coin from outside Egypt did not however assume importance immediately upon the reform : this can best be shown by a classification of the identifiable specimens under their mints in chronological groups for the period of apporximately 110 years from the reform to the death of Arcadius. The first five groups (A to E) cover roughly ten years each, the last three (F to H) roughly twenty : the longer spaces have been chosen in the later part, because the material is more scanty, and also the sequence of issues during the latter half of the fourth century has not been studied so exactly as that of the Constantinian house, and there are more convenient limits at wider intervals.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	Total
Alexandria	82	10	25	23	50	39	11	23	263
Antioch	1	5	18	24	27	9	4	18	106
Nicomedia	—	—	22	30	18	9	2	3	84
Cyzicus	1	1	7	16	17	10	2	12	66
Constantinople	—	—	—	14	11	9	5	8	47
Heraclea	—	—	5	8	3	1	—	—	17
Thessalonica	—	—	4	16	6	5	5	1	37
Rome	—	1	39	13	6	2	5	—	66
Siscia	—	—	4	9	1	—	—	1	15
Aquileia	1	—	1	6	1	1	—	2	12
Arles	—	—	13	2	1	—	—	—	16
Trèves	—	1	4	2	—	—	—	2	9
Tarraco	—	1	1	3	—	—	—	—	5
London	—	—	1	—	—	—	—	—	1
Totals	85	19	144	166	141	85	34	70	744

It will be seen from this table that in the first decade after the reform comparatively few coins from outside mints occur : but they rapidly become more numerous, and by the end of the reign of Constantine the local issues form only a small proportion of the whole. This evidence agrees generally with that of the hoards which have come under my observation : for instance, in a hoard from Denderah (Petrie, Denderah, p. 36), dateable about 310, coins of the Alexandrian mint are 70% of the whole : in one of about 326 from Antinoe, 47% : in one from the Fayûm (Journ. Intern. XVI, pp. 2 ff.) of about 345, 25% : in one of about 360, 44% : and in one of about 400, 35% (The two last will be published shortly in the Journal of Roman Studies.)

Evidently it took some years after the monetay reform of Diocletian to break down the bar (whether legal or customary) against the importation of coin into Egypt. Similarly the Egyptians continued to reckon in drachmae instead of in denarii, and it was not till about twenty years after the change that the new standard became predominant. But thereafter the importation grew rapidly, and soon only about a quarter of the money circulating in Eygpt was of local issue : later the influx diminished, and a larger proportion of the coins is of Alexandrian mintage.

It would be interesting to discover the economic causes which led to Egypt becoming a coin-importing country under Constantine : but they can hardly be conjectured. The main export of Egypt during the Roman rule was corn : but this was largely collected in the form of taxes and sent to Rome without any equivalent return in money or kind : and there is no evidence to suggest that there was any change in this matter in the fourth century. Neither is there anything to point to a revival of trade in other respects at this time : fromthe middle of the third century all the indications are that economically Egypt went rapidly down hill. And it is hardly likely that the imperial government subsidised Egypt. The problem is on e for which I cannot find a satisfactory solution : I have previously suggested (Journ. Intern. 1914, p. 36) that the hoarding tendency of the Egyptian would lead to an inflow of coin, but this, though it may have been a contributory factor, does not adequately explain the position shown by the figures given above.

Whatever the explanation of the situation in the fourth century may be, in the fifth everything points to a complete economic collapse. There is not in the finds from Oxyrhynchus a single coin of recognisable official mintage belonging to the period between Honorius and Justinian. the only pieces that may be ascribed to this time are barbarous imitations of the issues of the Theodosian house, mere bits of bronze with degraded types, often reduced to a jumble of lines, and meaningless legends, sometimes nothing but dots and dashes. I have suggested (in a paper to appear in the Journal of Roman Studies) that these bits of bronze represent the "myriad of denarii" which was the unit of reckoning in Egypt at this period : the depreciation must have been sumewhat parallel to that in Russia at the present day, as a late fourth century papyrus gives an equation of 2020 myriads of denarii to the gold solidus. Obviously it would not be worth while to spend any trouble over preparing a coin of such low value, which can hardly have had more meaning than a counter : in fact, the composition of hoards of this period suggests that the pieces of metal in them were treated as counters, since they consist of coins of various periods and countries, many worn to illegibility or clipped to fragments, with an intermixture of bits of bronze or even lead which show no stamp nor any sign of ever having been meant for coins.

The only thing about these barbarous imitations which suggests that they may have been issued officially is the fact that they struck not cast. In the early part of the fourth century large quantities of cast coins were in circulation in Egypt, and the moulds from which they were made are frequently found : I described two groyps from Oxyrhynchus in Num. chron. 1905, pp. 342 ff. These were probably the work of forgers, who would find it a profitable occupation to make counterfeit coin when the coin had an appreciable value above its metal contents. But in the conditions of the fith century it would have been a waste of energy for an Egyptian forger to cast, much more to strike, anything purporting to be a bronze coin.

(D.) An attempt to rehabilitate the Egyptian bronze currency was made under Justinian, when a special issue was made at the mint of Alexandria. The normal piece was of 12 nummia however continued to be struck till the Arab conquest. the specimens of this series found at Oxyrhynchus were

Justinian	10	Maurice	7
Justin II	7	Arcadius	14
Tiberius	5	Heraclius	149
[57 examples could be be definitely identified.]

Coins of this type supplied practically the whole of the bronze currency of Egypt during the last century of Roman rule. Anastasius had previously reformed the imperial bronze coinage by the introduction of the large follis of 40 nummia and its subdivisions : and a good many specimens of his issues and those of Justin I and Justinian are found in Egypt : these are from outside mints, as the mint of Alexandria did not strike these denominations. But it is rare to come across any examples belonging to reigns later than Justinian, and it would appear that after that emperor had revived a special coinage for Egypt the old monetary isolation of the country was renewed. The only non-Alexandrian coin of this period found at Oxyrhynchus was an early follis of Justinian.

The specimens classed as "barbarous" are pieces of 12 nummia of the same general type as those of Justinian and his three successors, but have unintelligible legends. The are probably to be referred, as in the British Museum Catalogue, to the reign of Focas, which is otherwise unrepresented in this series : the work of the mint at Alexandria had steadily degenerated, and some coins, particularly of Maurice, are only saved from being classified with the "barbarous" ones by the fact that the legend retains enough fragments of the emperor's name to show what the engraver had in mind. Heraclius introduced a new design, and with it an improvement in execution. An alternative would be to assume that the "barbarous" group was struck after the Arab conquest : but, while it is not improbably that the Arabs would continue to strike, as they certainly used, coins of the Byzantine types, they would more naturally have imitated the new design of Heraclius rather than the old one which had been abandoned for over 30 years. Some rude imitations of the coins of Heraclius, which may be Arab, have occurred elsewhere in Egypt.

The standard unit of reckoning during this period in Egypt was the gold solidus, fractions of which were expressed in carats : and the relationship of the bronze to the gold has not been determined.

The Arab conquest virtually marks the limit of the finds of coins in the mounds of Oxyrhynchus : only 20 Arab pieces, all of an early period, were discovered.