Posted 08/22/2023 8:57 pm
It is an ancient bronze coin from Ptolemaic Egypt. The obverse (top pic) is a portrait of Zeus-Ammon, the Egyptianized version of the Greek god Zeus. on the reverse is an eagle, with the Greek inscription "PTOLEMAIOY BASILEWS" (King Ptolemy); on your reverse pic I can fuzzily see the letters "BASILE". Since most of the pharaohs of Ptolemaic Egypt were named "Ptolemy" and they didn't differentiate themselves by number like modern historians do, this doesn't really help in narrowing things down.
There is a nice clear cornucopia countermark, which is known to have been applied (for reasons unknown) to coins during the reigns of Ptolemy III through to Ptolemy V (so about 246 BC to 180 BC). That's probably as narrow a date range as you're likely to get.
The PtolemAE website is my go-to one-stop-shop for identifying Ptolemaic bronzes (note: website is picture-heavy and may take a while to load for some browsers).
There is a nice clear cornucopia countermark, which is known to have been applied (for reasons unknown) to coins during the reigns of Ptolemy III through to Ptolemy V (so about 246 BC to 180 BC). That's probably as narrow a date range as you're likely to get.
The PtolemAE website is my go-to one-stop-shop for identifying Ptolemaic bronzes (note: website is picture-heavy and may take a while to load for some browsers).
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
