athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the athenian agora / john h. kroll
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
1/9
John
H. Kroll*
Athenian
tetradrachms
recently
discovered
in the Athenian Agora
(PI. Ill)
Summary. — Preliminary
report
on
a ca. 400-piece hoard of
4th-century pi-style
tetradrachms excavated in
2005 from beneath
the floor of
a public
office in the Athenian
Agora,
together
with
publication of
two other
notable
Athenian
tetradrachms
from the
recent
excavations.
One
of
these tetradrachms
belongs to the earliest 4th-century
coinage
to depict
Athena with a
profile eye.
It is proposed that this early profile-eye coinage began probably in the
380s or 370s
and
was replaced by the mechanical and hastily struck pi-style silver in the later
350s.
Résumé.
— Un trésor d'environ 400 tétradrachmes
attiques
du IVe s. (style
pi)
trouvé
en
2005 lors de la fouille d'un bâtiment
public
de l'Agora athénienne et deux remarquables
tétradrachmes
exhumés
aussi lors
de fouilles récentes à l'Agora font l'objet
du présent article.
Un
de ces tétradrachmes
se
rattache au
monnayage
du début du IVe s., avec une Athénadont
l'œil
est figuré de profil. Le premier
monnayage
avec
l'œil
de
profil date
probablement des
années
380-370 et
a
été remplacé
par l'argent
de style pi frappé de manière négligée et
mécanique
dans
les
années
350.
Since
the publication of
The
Athenian Agora,
XXVI: The
Greek Coins,
a
little more
than
a decade ago, by far the most significant numismatic finds
in
the
continuing
Agora excavations have been three involving
Old
Style Athenian
tetradrachms. What
better
occasion
for
announcing them than
in
this volume
honoring Hélène
Nicolet-Pierre, who
has
devoted so
much
of her scholarship
to
the study
of
Athenian
silver coinage and has
enriched its
understanding
immeasurably.
The
most
spectacular
of
these
Agora discoveries
is
the
most recent:
a
major
hoard of tetradrachms of the
second
half of the 4th century
B.C.
that was
recovered in July, 2005,
from
beneath the dirt floor of a building just south of
the Tholos in the
SE corner
of the Agora
square.
Located in the area of the
Athenian offices known as the Archeia, the
structure
is the one tentatively
identified on plans of the Agora as the Strategeion, the headquarters of Athens'
ten
generals. Apart
from 46 coins lying loose
at
the top
of
the hoard, the
main
* 104A
Woodstock Rd., Oxford,
OX2
7NE,
UK
On
the
Strategeion, Wycherlhy 1957, pp. 127 and
174; Thompson Wycherley
1972,
pp.
73-74.
RN2006,p. 57-63
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
2/9
58
John H.
Kroll
body of
the deposit was
recovered
in
a
great
concreted mass,
having been
buried, probably
in a sack, in
a
concave pit below the floor.
As
the Agora
conservators
at the
time
of
this
writing
had only
begun
the
glacial
task
of
separating the coins
from
the corroded mass,
I
am here able to give
only
a few
preliminary observations.
To udge from
its
total weight (6.280 g), the hoard contains about
400-420
tetradrachms. So far as can be
seen
from the loose coins
and
the coins exposed
on the
outer
surface of the mass, the tetradrachms are exclusively of the
common
pi-style
variety,
a
coinage that is characterized by the π-shaped tendril
ornament
on Athena's
helmet,
and by
owls with
heavily
fringed
and frenetic-
looking
heads. Two partially cleaned specimens
from
the hoard
are illustrated
in PI. Ill,
1-2.
One of the most massively minted coinages in
Athenian
numismatic history,
the
hastily struck
pi-style silver
is
well
represented
in
other
sizable
hoards,
such
as Delos 1910 (IGCH 110: 50 tetradrachms), Piraeus 1938 (CH 3, 27:
100
tetradrachms),
and
Thorikos
1969
(IGCH 134: 282
tetradrachms,
with a pi-
style gold
stater
of the early
3rd
century
and
4 regal Macedonian coins). From
the Thorikos hoard
and
supporting numismatic
and historical
considerations,
the coinage is known to have come to an end
in
294.
2
Copied in
pseudo-
Athenian tetradrachms minted
in
Egypt beginning in the late
340s,
3
there
are
good
reasons
to
think that
the coinage commenced near the middle of the 4th
century. 4
Its
huge
scale, monotonous,
mechanical die-engraving,
and
careless,
slapdash minting reflect the tremendous success of the program associated
with
the
statesman
Euboulos
to
restore
the
Laurion
silver mining
industry
to
5th-century levels of productivity. Writing in 355, Xenophon complained
(Poroi 4.28) that
at that time
the industry had been operating far below its
potential. A
decade
later,
however, the
situation
had been
totally reversed:
inscriptions
pertaining
to the
leasing of
mines indicate that
by
the
mid
340s
silver exploration and
extraction had risen to
peak
levels.
Full
study
of
the new
Agora hoard should clarify
its
chronological position in the
long, half-century
mintage of this vast, internationally circulating coinage. Irini
Marathanki,
the
current numismatist at the Agora, is undertaking the die-study
and
publication.
The two other tetradrachm discoveries since the early 1990s are of
single
coins,
both
found,
outside of
significant
archaeological
contexts,
in
the
on-
2 Nicolet-Pierre / Kroll 1990,
pp.
2-3. Kroll 1993, p.
10.
3 Nicolet-Pierre
1979. van Alfen 2002A,
pp. 24-31,
pi.
120-121,
125-131.
4 Kroll 1993,
p.
8.
Publication of the
incomplete and
only
partially
legible
nomothetic law
of
354/3
(1975 Agora
inscription I
7495)
by
M. Richardson
and J. Camp will
do
much to advance
knowledge of the reforms
pertaining to
the Athenian
silver
industry
at
this time. The
preliminary
text
that
Richardson presented
at
the 1997
meeting
of the American
Philological
Association in
Chicago refers
inter
alia to
the exchanging of
silver
coins in the Agora, the
receiving
back of
(recoined?) silver from the mint, unminted silver, furnaces, and the refining
of
silver.
5
Aperghis 1997-98,
pp.
17-19.
RN
2006,
p. 57-63
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
3/9
Athenian tetradrachms recently
discovered
in the Athenian Agora 59
going excavations
to
the north
of
the
Agora
square proper. 6
One
is
a tetradrachm
from Athens'
earliest owl
coinage
(PI.
Ill,
3). 7
Although
heavily worn and damaged by surface corrosion, the reverse shows
an owl with a plump, compact body that extends out diagonally from the
head
in
a
stance
that
in
the archaic period
occurs
only
in
the owls
of Seltman
s Group
H. 8 Apart
from
belonging to this most
historic
and
relatively rare early
Athenian
mintage,
the coin has the further distinction
of being
only the second
pre-480 tetradrachm to have shown up in the excavations. 9
Far more noteworthy is the other new
tetradrachm (PI.
Ill,
4),
(l since
it
is the
first
tetradrachm
of
its type known
to have
been
found in
Attica. Prior
to
its
discovery,
all tetradrachms of this type
with
known
proveniences came
from
hoards in Egypt or in Sicily. We
must thank
Hélène Nicolet herself for
publishing the two largest lots of these tetradrachms: a lot of 14 specimens
in
her
invaluable paper
on
the
Tell
El-Athrib
hoard
from
Egypt
and
the
still
more
important lot of 1 9
fresh
tetradrachms
from
the Lentini, Sicily, hoard that she
published in collaboration
with
Carmen Arnold-Biucchi. 12 This
second lot
is so
representative
of
the
many
and
varied obverse dies of
the
coinage that
it
will be
convenient to
refer
to the coinage
collectively
as the «
Lentini-group
» coinage.
I
illustrate eight specimens
from
the
Lentini hoard
in
PI. Ill, 5-12.
In these
hoard
publications, Mme Nicolet
argued that
the
tetradrachms in
question were pseudo-Athenian imitations that
while
copying pi-style
tetradrachms
happened to get some details wrong. Obverse eyes are
often
too
large
and
are heavily lined. On
reverses
the alpha of the
legend,
instead of
beginning
at the
neck of
the
owl,
opposite
the
beak,
as
on
pi-style
coins,
touches the side of the head. And the
flans
are wider
and
less thick than the
chunky
flans of the pi-style coins. She proposed that the pieces were probably
6 In excavation section BE,
for
the location
of which
see
Kroll
1993, pi. 35. Although the
mineralized, dark grey surfaces
of
both
tetradrachms
have the appearance of
lead,
the coins'
weights and
the results
of
several
elemental
tests confirm
that
their
metal
is silver.
7 Inv. Ν
12199
(BE- 1555). 17.24 g, diameter: 24 mm, die axis: 3:00. Recovered 22 June 2000
while cleaning, i.e.,
outside
of
a
proper archaeological
context.
8
Seltman
1924,
pp.
189-192,
pi.
13-14.
Kraay
1976, pp.
60-61,
pi. 10,
nos.
175-178.
9 The other is Kroll 1993, no. 7 (Seltman Group L).
10 Inv. Ν 12175 (BE- 1531). 17.82 g, diameter: 25 mm, die axis: 9:00.
Recovered
28
July
1997, while dismantling
a wall.
Nicolet-Pierre
2001,
pp.
185-6 and pi.
5. Other Egyptian
hoards with
tetradrachms of
this type:
Tell
el-Maskhouta
(ICGH
1649), see
Naster 1948,
pi.
1.12; and
«
Nahman's
hoard »,
van
Alfen 2002B,
pp. 62-63,
pi. 13,
nos. 6 and
8
(the
latter not being
pi-style
owing
to
the
position of
the
reverse alpha),
and
possibly
2
and 5, which
may be imitations (note the
crude,
linear lips
of
the
Athenas). Nicolet-Pierre
1998-1999, pi. 3.7 (SNG
Paris-Delepierre,
no. 1472)
also comes from Egypt.
12
Nicolet-Pierre /
Arnold-Biucchi 2000, pp. 167-171, pis. 18-19.
Other Sicilian
hoards
with such coins
are Contessa
{IGCH 2119), see Nicolet-Pierre
1998-99,
pi.
3.6;
and Manfria
(/GC// 2121). Cf. Nicolet-Pierre
1998-99,
pi. 3.6
(Collection Prudente,
Catania).
RN
2006,
p. 57-63
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
4/9
60
John H. Kroll
minted
in Egypt; those that made
their way
to Sicily may have been brought
there by itinerant mercenary soldiers.
l3
Needless to
say,
the
new
Agora tetradrachm complicates this interpretation,
as do some fractional coins of this style that were also recovered
from
soil of
Attica. In 1 963
Mando
Oikonomidou published
a
small lamp hoard from the
Athenian suburb of Agios Ioannis Rentis that contained 12 triobols and
diobols, at least some of
which
have
Athena heads
that
appear to
have
been
produced by
the
same
die-cutters as
were
responsible
for some of
the
Lentini-
group tetradrachms. 4 The eyes of most of the
fractions
are
relatively
large.
All
are heavily lined. And the eye of one of the triobols (PI. Ill, 13) is singularly
big and
bulbous, precisely like the eye on the Lentini tetradrachm, PI. Ill, 6.
The lamp hoard triobol
and
diobol, pi. Ill, 13 and 14, both have a distinctive
facial profile that slants down
through
the tip of the long nose
and
then cuts
back
sharply
in
a
line
allowed
by
a
deeply
receding
chin,
just as
on
the
Lentini
tetradrachm PI. Ill,
5.
Since this
kind
of profile is
otherwise
exceedingly rare,
and since bulging
profile
eyes
are
unparalleled anywhere
else
in
Athenian
coinage, the lamp hoard coins should,
I
believe, be identified as Lentini-group
fractions.
The
Attic proveniences
of
the fractions
and
the
Agora tetradrachm
support
the
deductions
of Colin Kraay, who was the
first scholar
to draw attention to
tetradrachms of the Lentini type, believing them to be genuinely Athenian. 5 He
assumed
that they were the first coins Athens struck after
a
hiatus
in
minting
following
the Peloponnesian War
and noted
that they seem to
provide
a
stylistic
bridge
between
the
traditional
owl
silver
of
the
5th
century
and
the
pi-style
silver of
the second
half of
the
4th century.
Salient features are inherited from
the 5th-century owls: flans have the same the same
widths
and
thicknesses;
facial features
are large and bold; eyes are
outlined;
and, on reverses, the
ethnics begin at the side of the owls' heads.
On
the
other hand,
the innovations
introduced on the Lentini-type tetradrachms
establish
precedents that
continued on in the pi coinage. Apart from the conspicuous
fully
profile eye
given to Athena, we should note the more naturally modeled lips
and
mouth
that are largely responsible
for lending
a
softer, maidenly
aspect to Athena's
face. The
helmet ornaments
on
the
Lentini-group
obverses approach
and
sometimes
actually
assume
the
schematic
pi-formation
of
the
later
coins.
Reverses introduce a newly
proportioned
owl
that is
stubbier, more
compact
and designed with a head that is larger and more
fringed
than the
heads
of
owls
on
Athenian
silver of the
5th
century.
Kraay thought that the coinage began in the late 390s or the 380s when the
13 Further, Nicolet-Pierre 1998-99, pp.
102-106.
14 Oikonomidou
1963.
A thirteenth coin in the
hoard
is
a
worn drachm of late
5th-century
type. The hoard is currently on
permanent
display in the Numismatic
Museum,
Athens.
15 Kraay 1968, p.
8,
pi. IV.5. Kraay 1976,
pp. 74-75, 356,
pi.
1,
no.
200. Whence
Kroll
1993, p. 8.
RN2006,p. 57-63
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
5/9
Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in
the
AthenianAgora
6
1
Lentini and
other
Sicilian
hoards with the
coinage
were believed to date.
But
more
recently Carmen
Arnold-Biucchi has explained that the latest Syracusan
coins
in
these
hoards
also
allow
a
dating
in
the
370s
or
even
into
the
early
60s.16
The lamp
with
the fractional
silver
is not much more helpful since it belongs
to a class that dates to the first
half but
mainly to the second quarter of the
4th
century.
n
Given
the wide
range of
dating possibilities afforded
by this
evidence, it is impossible to
feel
confident about when coins of Lentini group
began.
While a date
within
a decade
after
the Peloponnesian War
cannot be
absolutely
ruled
out, a starting date in the
second
or third decade of the 4th
century
seems more probable.
18
But if
the
coinage
did not commence until two
or
more decades
after
the
Peloponnesian
War,
further questions arise. Did Athens not
mint
any
tetradrachms
at
all during
this protracted
period? Or, did the Athenians
resume
minting relatively soon after the war
but
continue to
employ
the
traditional
designs
of
the late
5th
century owls? In
that
case, the
shift
to the profile-eye
obverses
should probably be
understood
not as
a
gesture to
merely modernize
the coinage 19 but
rather
as alteration to give the coinage an easily recognizable
new
look so that good new
Athenian
silver could be readily distinguished from
the
many existing
forgeries in
circulation.
20
To udge from
finds
in
the Agora21
and from
the 375/4 Law of Nikophon, 22 forgeries were a problem, and one
way
of
safeguarding
against
them would
have
been
by
modifying, as governments
do today with
paper
money, some
detail
of the
existing
design.
The
next intentional
modification
of
the
4th-century
owls occurred
with
the
slight drop in the position of the
alpha
in the coins' ethnic. The adjustment
marks the
beginning of
the
pi-style silver
proper
and
is hard to explain except
as a
means for distinguishing
the new pi
silver from
the preceding
Lentini-
group coinage
and
any
existing
counterfeits
that might have been based on it.
If so,
one has to
wonder whether
the introduction of the pi-style silver might
not have been
accompanied
by a massive recoining of all Athenian
silver in
local circulation (see note 4 above).
I don't know
if any of
this will
convince Hélène Nicolet. But lest readers
be
concerned about the propriety of presenting a discussion that contests an
16
In
Nicolf.t-Pierre /Arnold-Biucchi
2000, pp. 165-166.
17 Howland 1958,
pp.
60-61,
nos.
234-235.
8 The coinage must
have been of
some duration, for
it
encompassed at least two phases
of
Athena heads: one
of dies
with
bold facial features of
the goddess
(PI. Ill, 4-9)
and a
second,
presumably later phase
of
Athena heads with smaller
noses and
eyes
(PI. Ill, 1-12). The
later
heads
are virtually
identical
to
the
finely
featured
Athenas of
the
pi-style coinage.
19 So Kraay 1968, p.
8,
and 1976, pp. 74-75.
20 So van
Alfln
2006 note 44.
21 Kroll 1993, pp.
4, 6,
7,
17.
22
Stroud
1974,
pp.
169-171.
RN
2006.
p. 57-63
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
6/9
62
John
H.
Kroll
interpretation of hers in a volume in her honor,
I
would
like to
conclude
on a
personal note. In the late 1980s, Mme
Nicolet
and
I
collaborated on
a
study of
the 3rd-century owl
silver
of Athens.23
It
was a highly agreeable
and mutually
profitable enterprise
but reached
an
uncomfortable
impasse when
near
the end
we
found ourselves
in disagreement, as now, about whether several
tetradrachms in
our survey
should be regarded
as pseudo-Athenian
imitations
or as
genuinely
Athenian. What
to do? One day
as our
paper
was
in
the final
stages,
a
letter arrived from Mme Nicolet suggesting that we should confess in
a
note that we were
unable
to
concur
and « ce sera
plus
amusant pour nos
lecteurs. »
I
have always
treasured
that letter
with its
genial sense of humor in
recommending to a
skeptical
colleague
that
if we
cannot agree,
then we must
at
least agree to disagree which others
will
only
find
entertaining And so
I
hope I have
not taken
undue advantage of
her
good-natured generosity in
accepting
once
again
her
invitation
to
express
a
differing
view.
24
Bibliography
Aperghis 1997-98 :
G. C. Aperghis A
reassessment
of
the
Laurion
mining
ease
records, BICS 42, pp.
1-20.
Howland 1958
:
R. H.
Howland, The Athenian
Agora,
IV:
Greek Lamps and
their Survivals Princeton, 1958.
Kraay 1968
: C.
M.
Kraay,
Coins
ofAncient
Athens,
Newcastle uponTyne,
1968
(Minerva
Numismatic
Handbooks,
2).
Kraay
1976
: C.
M.
Kraay, Archaic and Classical Greek Coins, Berkeley
-
Los
Angeles, 1976.
Kroll
1993
: J.
H. Kroll,
The Athenian
Agora,
XXVI: The
Greek Coins,
Princeton, 1993
Nicolet-Pierre
1979 : H.
Nicolet-Pierre,
Les monnaies des deux derniers
satrapes d'Egypte avant la
conquête
d'Alexandre,
in
O.
M0RKHOLM and
N.
Waggoner (eds.), Greek Numismatics and
Archaeology:
Essays in Honor of
Margaret Thompson, Wetteren, 1979, pp. 221-230.
Nicolet-Pierre 1998-99 : H. Nicolet-Pierre, Tétradrachmes pseudo
athéniens en Sicile
et
en Italie, Klearchos
40-41,
1998-99, pp. 93-1
12,
pis.
1-3.
Nicolet-Pierre 2001
: H.
Nicolet-Pierre,
Retour sur le trésor de Tel El-
Athrib
1903
(IGCH
1663)
conservé
à
Athènes,
ArchEph
2001
(2004),
pp.
173-
187.
Nicolet-Pierre / Arnold-Biucchi 2000 : H. Nicolet-Pierre
and
C. Arnold-
Biucchi,
Le trésor de Lentini
(Sicile) 1957 {IGCH
2117), in
S. M. Hurter
and
C. Arnold-Biucchi (eds.), Pour Denyse,
Divertissements numismatiques
Bern,
2000, pp. 165-171, pis.
18-19.
23 Nicolet-Pierre / Kroll
1990. Cf.
Kroll
1993,
pp.
1-12.
24 I
thank John Camp, Director
of
the Agora Excavations,
together
with
Irini
Marathaki,
Alice
Paterakis, Beth Orr,
and
Peter
van
Alfen
for
their assistance in the
preparation
of
these
notes.
RN2006,p. 57-63
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
7/9
Athenian
tetradrachms recently
discovered
in
the
AthenianAgora 63
Nicolet-Pierre
/ Kroll 1990
: H. Nicolet-Pierre and J . H. Kroll,
Athenian
tetradrachm coinage of the third century B.C., AJN2, p. 1-35.
Oikonomidou
1963
:
M. Karamessini-Oikonomidou,
Chronika,
Archaio-
logikon Deltion,
18,
1963,
p.
50, pi.
56.
Seltman 1924
: C. T. Seltman,
Athens, Its
History and Coinage before
the
Persian
Invasion Cambridge, 1924.
Stroud
1974
: R.S.
Stroud,
An
Athenian
law on silver
coinage,
Hesperia,
43, 1974, pp. 157-188.
Wycherley
1957
: R. E. Wycherley, The AthenianAgora, III: Literary and
Epigraphical
Testimonia, Princeton,
1957.
Thompson / Wycherley 1972 : H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The
Athenian
Agora, XIV:
The
Agora of
Athens, Princeton, 1972.
van
Alfen
2002 A : P.
van Alfen,
Owls
from
the 1989 Syria
Hoard,
AJN2,
14, 2002, pp.
1-58.
van
Alfen 2002B
: P.
van Alfen, Two
unpublished hoards and other
owls
from Egypt, AJN2, 14, 2002, pp. 59-71.
van Alfen 2006 :
P.
van Alfen, Problems in ancient
imitative
and
counterfeit
coinage, in Z.
Archibald,
J. Davies, and
V
Gabrielsen (eds.),
Making, Moving,
and
Managing: the New World of
Ancient
Economies, 323-31
BC,
London, 2006,
pp. 322-354.
Plate III
1-2. Two tetradrachms
from
the 2005 Agora hoard.
3-4.
Agora
tetradrachms
Ν
12199 and
Ν 12175.
5-12. Eight
tetradrachms
from
the 1957
Lentini
hoard. Photos reproduced
from
Nicolet-Pierre / Arnold-Biucchi 2000, pis. 18
and
19, nos. 18
(ANS),
19,
17, 15,
4, 10, 6 (ANS), 1 (ANS).
13-14.
Triobol and diobol from the 1962
Ag.
Ioannis Rentis lamp hoard.
Photos
reproduced
and enlarged (x2) from Oikonomiou 1963, pi.
56.5
and 6.
RN2006,p.
57-63
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
8/9
-
8/9/2019 Athenian tetradrachms recently discovered in the Athenian Agora / John H. Kroll
9/9
2 6
Revue Numismatique PI. III
Kroll
thenian
tetradrachms recently
discovered
n the
thenian
gora