Help With Ptolemy

Hmmm. We've only got 13 Ptolemies of Egypt to choose from... it shouldn't be that hard...

The portrait isn't going to be much help in identifying the ruler. All the Ptolemies were clean-shaven in Greek fashion; this is a portrait of Zeus, wearing the horned diadem of Zeus-Ammon.

The best indicator for narrowing down this one seems to be the eagle. See how it's facing left, but got it's head turned to the right? That's not normal.

I can only find examples on Wildwinds for coins of Ptolemy II, Ptolemy III, Ptolemy IV and Ptolemy V like this. Here's a Wildwinds example for Ptolemy III

How big is it? Measure the diameter in millimetres, and you've got the denomination. We don't really know what the ancient Graeco-Egyptians called each denomination, so we simply use the diameters. Once we know that, I can look up each ruler in Sear to see if there's a match.

Best match I can find is Sear 7842, an AE38 of Ptolemy IV, Eagle standing on thunderbolt, looking back, wings open, [sigma]E monogram between legs. Referenced as Svoronos 1148.

Wildwinds only has this tiny picture of this coin, but CoinArchiveshas a better pic. The only thing that doesn't quite match your coin with these is the size: 35mm is a tad too small.

Note there's an error happening here somewhere in these listings, because the auction CoinArchives sourced it's info from puts this coin under Ptolemy V, while Sear and Wildwinds puts it under Ptolemy IV. I think CoinArchives has been outvoted; unless there's been recent scholarship reattributing these coins to Ptolemy V, I'd stick with the attribution given by both Sear and Wildwinds.