That same point applies also to another feature worth discussing: the legend ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ. As its letters are distributed around the outer fields of the reverse, the legend might suggest that the engraver was not comfortable in spacing the letters out on the same plane and rendering them in the same size. Moreover, he may have cut each letter as he went without the use of a groundline, rule, or other device by which to ensure that they would be evenly placed with respect to one another. Yet, the coin also reveals that the engraver first used a drill to mark the extremities of the letters and then cut a slightly shallower or thinner line to connect those holes. This method is well attested among fourth-century inscriptions cut into bronze, such as the pinakia that served first to identify Athenian citizens who had sworn (annual) oaths to serve as jurors and then, second, by use of a special device (a klêrotêrion) to deselect a portion of them randomly on any given day when they volunteered for service (as an anti-corruption measure). Given that very large numbers of Athenians served as jurors on a more or less continual basis, those employed to cut the citizens’ names onto individual pinakia had need to employ the most efficient method possible.
Much the same problem presented itself to those engraving dies for use in the numerous mints of Alexander’s empire—very large numbers of dies were needed, and they had to be cut into much harder metal than was used for perhaps any other purpose in antiquity. We should not forget that the die engraver worked as a sculptor of miniature objects, in effect, since even the die for a tetradrakhma was perhaps no wider than 40mm and that the relevant surface that would produce a coin was perhaps no wider than 25mm. In short, even if we cannot know whether the engraver for the Wulfing coin’s reverse die was literate, it is clear that he used professional methods on par with what other specialists had to employ elsewhere and that he did so with the greatest of skill. Therefore, we should not be tempted to think that technical incompetence is in any way the reason why the coin’s letters or other features look the way they do.
But one other objection might be made, and that is that the engraver worked too fast to do the job well. Even a casual survey of auctions and collections show that a large number of specimens of Price 112 survive. Price catalogued seven specimens in the British Museum and any reasonably good collection of Macedonian coins might have at least one specimen, and the better collections typically have many—for example, two modern Athenian collections alone, the Saroglos Collection and the Alpha Bank Collection, are both known for their comprehensiveness and possess three and four specimens of Price 112, respectively (SNG Greece 4 nos. 499-502; SNG Greece 2 nos. 225-227). In other words, Price 112 is a relatively common coin. Just to take the Saroglos and Alpha Bank coins, as well as the one example of Price 112 for which Price produced an image (i.e. his 112a), these eight specimens were minted from eight different obverse dies and eight different reverse dies. The Wulfing specimen does not share any of those dies, so for just this very small sample of coins—nine—a simple die-study shows that Price 112 was in all likelihood a vast issue requiring many dozens of obverse and reverse dies, each of which had to be carved by hand. (I will write in future blogs about die-studies and extrapolation from them to gauge the size of coinages, but will point out now that Price lists no die-links between the issues in the British Museum, too—but without images we cannot know whether at least one of those coins does not also share at least one die with any of the other coins thus far noted).
In any case, Price 112 is only one of nineteen issues that Price attributed just to the mint of ‘Amphipolis’ for c. 323-320, and some of those issues (e.g. 113, which features a Macedonian helmet in place of the Phrygian helmet) were at least as large as Price 112 if not more so to judge by the number of surviving specimens; moreover, crosslinking of obverse dies between these various issues is yet another great puzzle (to be taken up in a future blog).
