I recently came across this small bronze in a group of coins purchased for stock. I don’t normally do much with Greek coinage but it looked interesting and easy enough to identify.It turns out to be a coin assigned to a mint at Seleucia ad Tigrim (a different city called Seleucia to the previous post), although the city ethnic does not appear on the coin the authorities appear to be confident over that part of the attribution, but from what date?
Ostensibly the coin bears a date of 224 but how does that translate to our own era? In a footnote to BMC (Greek) Parthia from 1903 there is the suggestion that if this is the Seleucid era it should be 89/8 BC, however the character of the coin may mean that it is later in date and uses a local dating era. An earlier misreading gave these coins a date of 324 in the Seleucid era, clearly in error, and there was speculation of them being issued at a time when the city was in revolt.
BMC (Greek) Mesopotamia from 1922, in which the coin is actually catalogued, again has this speculation but is no further on with a date attribution.
The coin is available for purchase by either following the link on the top left (although people using Firefox as a browser may experience some difficulty logging in) or may be reserved by expressing an interest in a comment to this post.
