Lot 3525

Description

Attica, Aegina, (510-500 B.C.), silver stater, (12.038 grams), obv. smoothed shell sea turtle without row of dots down dorsal spine, countermarked on shell and a curious die crack from head to flipper, rev. 'Rough incuse undeveloped pattern', (S.1848 [£400], Asyut Group IIa 'thin collar type', cf.425-431, cf.Sotheby's London sale March 7, 1996 [lot 100]). Very fine, worn obverse die with die crack.

The Asyut hoard suggests the chronology to be 510-480 B.C. Much has been written on this early coinage since Samuel Millbank wrote his book on 'The Coinage of Aegina' in 1924. Since then important publications all trying to establish the order of issue and the chronolgy of this series have been published, generally around the description of a relevant hoard. They include W.L. Brown 'Pheidons Alleged Aeginetan Coinage' (NC 1950, pp.177-204); R. Ross Holloway, 'An Archaic Hoard From Crete and the Early Aeginetan Coinage' in ANS Museum Notes 17 (1971, pp.1-21, written based on his doctoral dissertation [The Elder Turtles of Aegina, 1960, Princeton University]); Price and Waggoner, 'Archaic Greek Silver Coinage, The 'Asyut' Hoard', pp.69-76; Carmen Arnold-Biucchi et al., 'A Greek Archaic Silver Hoard from Selinus' ANS Museum Notes pp.14-22. The chronology is still under review and new hoards when published all go closer to the truth sometimes departing from the current view. Eg. Colin Kraay in ACGC (p.43-4) places the small skew reverse coinage (Asyut Group VII) to around 500 B.C. in contrast to our dating of 490-475 B.C. Reference can be made also to SNG Delepierre as that publication illustrates 298 staters from Aegina, known as the Megalopolis Hoard, now in the Paris cabinet from 1966. It was buried about 431 B.C.