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An Aeginetan coin in the Brukenthal Museum

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 MUZEUL
NATIONAL
BRUKENTHAL

BIBLIOTHECA B R V K EN T H A L
L VI11

MONEDA §1 COMERT
IN SUD-ESTUL EUROPEI
IV

Si hm 2 0 12
 MINISTERUL CULTURII §1 CULTELOR
MUZEUL NATIONAL BRUKENTHAL

BIBLIOTHECA BRVKENTHAL
LVIIL

MONEDA §1 COMERT
IN SUD-ESTUL EUROPEI
IV
STUDIA IN MEMORIAM MAGISTRI OLTEA DUDAU

COIN AND COMMERCE

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 Moneda §i comert in Sud Estul Europei, IV, 2012
An Aeginetan coin in the Brukenthal National Museum

AN AEGINETAN COIN IN THE BRUKENTHAL NATIONAL MUSEUM

GERHARD MICHAEL AMBROSI

Universitat Trier, Trier
ambrosi@uni-trier.de

Key-words: Ancient Greece; geometry; incommensurability; Euclid; moneyy coins.

Abstract: The article describes and comments an Aeginetan silver obolus in the numismatic collection o f the
Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania. It is a typical specimen from ca. 480 BC. It has the Aegina-
typical turtle emblem on the obverse and a “small skew” design on the reverse side. The specific geometric
reverse pattern suggests that the coin was minted shortly before the Persian invasion o f Greece in the years
480-479 BC because during the military action normal minting activity probably had stopped.

1. Introduction
The ancient coins from the Greek island
state of Aegina - near Athens - are interesting for
several reasons: (z) Aegina is considered to be the
origin of coinage in Greece, and consequently in
Europe1 (ii) the Aeginetan system of coin weights
had been adopted by many other monetary
authorities in ancient Greece2; (Hi) according to
Sheedy3 the acceptance of Aeginetan coinage went
even so far that many „states and whole regions
(such as Crete) evidently preferred to use
Aeginetan coins rather than mint local issues”; (/v)
even when Aegina had become politically and
economically insignificant, it still was proverbial
for monetary matters according to Aristotle4.
According to Welter it was not just coined money
which was ,,invented” in Aegina but capitalism
itself5. In short, Aeginetan coinage was extremely
prominent in ancient Greece.
A specimen of an ancient Aeginetan coin
is in the numismatic collection of the Brukenthal
National Museum, Sibiu. The purpose of this
article is first of all to publish the existence of this
1 Kraay 1976, p. 42: ,,Greek tradition certainly associated
Aegina with the earliest coinage”.
2 Figuerra 1981, p. 82: „The Aeginetan standard was employed
by the end o f the fifth century in. a contiguous area including
most o f the Peloponnesus, central Greece, Thessaly, the
Cyclades, the Dodecanese, southwest Asia Minor and Crete.
3 Sheedy 2012, p. 107.
4 In Metaphysics 1015a25 Aristotle tries to clarify the meaning
o f the word „necessary”. He writes that as it can be necessary
to take medicine when one is ill, so it can be necessary to sail
to Aegina for monetary matters. It seems to have been a well-
known proverbial expression to connect monetary matters
with Aegina at his time.
5 Welter 1954, p. 30: ,.Die Kapitalwirtschaft war in Aigina
entstanden” [„The capitalistic economy originated from
Aegina”, own translation, GMA],
coin which has not been published yet. This gives
the opportunity to go beyond the numismatic
characterization of the coin and to relate it to some
recent discussion of geometric and even
cosmological aspects of Aeginetan coin design.
2. Description
Figure h The Brukenthal National Museum’s
Aeginetan coin.
The coin is made of silver and weighs 1.02
g. Thus it is a comparatively small specimen. The
typical Aeginetan coin is the stater. It has a weight
and value of two drachm. The Aeginetan drachm
has a weight of 6.22 g. according to Gardner6 while
Welter7 gives a weight of 6.28 g. If we take the
latter’s scale we get the gram-values of the
following table of Aeginetan coin weights8. From
6 Gardner 1910, p. 9.
7 Welter 1938, p. 126.
8 Unfortunately, there is no unanimity concerning the „typieal”
Aeginetan coin weights. Kraay 1976,, p. 329 gives the weight
o f the Aeginetan stater as 12.2 g while Welter, in our table 1,
gives its weight as 12.57 g. See, in this particular context,
Seltman 1921, p. 108, n. 3: „what exactly is the Aeginetic
weight ?. Hill 1899, p. 35, speaks of an earlier Aeginetic stater
o f ca. 13,08 g. (201,8 grains) and a later one o f 12,60 g. (194,4
grains); Head 1911, p. XLV, mentions a stater o f 12,57 g. ( 194

13
 Moneda §i comert in Sud Estul Europei, IV, 2012
Gerhard Michael Ambrosi
this it emerges that the present coin is an obolos.
As the following table shows, the obolos is by no
means the smallest fraction of the currency.
The size of this coin is 7.9 times 8.6 mm.
Part of it seems to be cut off so that the obverse
symbol - a sea turtle - is not fully represented. But
since its weight is very near to the typical weight of
this class of coins, it might be that the shape was
trimmed at the mint already in order to comply
with the weight standard. But since we have no
certainty concerning the exact standard used, this is
just a supposition.
Welter Head
Denomination grains grains
Didrachm or
Stater 12.57 194
Drachm 6.28 97
Flemi drachm 3.14 48
Diobolos 2.09 32
Trihemiobolos 1.57 24
Obolos 1.04 16
Hemiobolos 0.52 8 the time span in which a specific coin might have
Tetartemorion 0.26 4 been created. But some variants might be due just
Tablel: Aeginetan coin weights.
The coin is obviously worn through usage
and originally it might well have had a more
prominent design. Nevertheless, it is visible that
the turtle had a row of pellets along its back with
an addition of a pellet to either side, thus giving a
T-shape o f a total of five pellets as accentuated in
section 4, fig. 4, where we will say a bit more
about the turtle emblem. Since there are Aeginetan
coins where the turtle emblem has seven pellets, it
might be that the missing part of the present coin
originally had two additional pellets.
The reverse of the coin shows a square
with two skew transversals which intersect
eccentrically as shown in the right half of fig. 1. In
addition, there is a line running to a comer of the
square from the intersection point. This design of
the coin’s reverse is very typical for the first half of
the fifth century BC.
3. Dating the coin
If we go by the reverse coin design, there
are three main epochs for Aeginetan coins. A
common characteristic of all of them is a square.
Until about 500 BC the square on the coias is cut
by transversals which intersect in the center of the
square. In the subsequent two centuries the
grains)’’. The last two numbers are the ones which appear for
the stater in our table 1. Thus it seems that in this table we
have at least agreement with Head 1911.
14
transversals intersect eccentrically. During the 5th
century the transversals are skew as in the case of
the present coin as seen on fig. 1. In the fourth
century the transversals are different, however,
namely they cut each other in a perpendicular way.
In every case there is a line, approximately 45°
steep, connecting the intersection point of the
transversals with a comer of the square. In the
present case of fig. 1 this line is the one running
from the lower right corner to the intersection point
of the other lines. It could be interpreted as part of
a somewhat imperfectly drawn diagonal of the
square which itself is not drawn with mathematical
precision in this case. But the fact that the motif of
the square in the circle of a coin which is cut by
more or less regular transversals suggests a basic
mathematical conception as standing behind three
centuries of Aeginetan coin design, and we will try
to say more about this point in the later sections.
Within each of the three epochs just
enumerated there are variants of the characteristic
design. They suggest the possibility of narrowing
to technical mishaps like cracks and repairs in the
forms used for making the coins or by
unintentional filling of the fields which originally
were intended to appear in a more pronounced
relief than the one which does appear on the coin.
Thus, during the epoch with concentrically
intersecting transversals there are coins with well
delineated fields so that numismatists speak, e.g.,
of „Union Jack” design. Other coins have some
„Union Jack” fields filled so that the appearance is
of a design with „windmill sails”.
Figure 2 shows a specimen of an earlier
Aeginetan coin9. Incidentally, it was excavated as
one o f f o u r votive coins in the foundations of
the reception hall of Great king Darius I in
Persepolis10. It gives an example of what has been
just said.
Figure 2: „Pre-Brukenthal” coin design (Persepolis find).
9 Schmidt 1957, plate 84.
10 For a description o f this discovery on Sept. 18, 1933, see
http://www.persepolis3d. com/data_krefter/excavation.htm,
accessed on June 4,2012.
 Moneda $i comert in Sud Estul Europei, IV, 2012
An Aeginetan coin in the Brukenthal National Museum
In spite of the deficient quality of the
reproduction it is clear that the basic pattern of the
reverse of this coin is one of perpendicular and
diagonal transversals in a square, the latter being
accentuated by us by inserting a square white
frame. Some of the coin’s compartments which are
created by the transversals are filled, however. But
this is done in such an unsystematic way that the
impression is that the filled sections are a mistake
or a sloppiness in execution rather than intentional
design.
Similarly, an imperfectly drawn diagonal
as in the case of the Brukenthal National
Museum’s coin might not be a characteristic
variant of the design but an imperfect work by the
craftsmen making the coin.
Figure 3: „Post-Brukenthal” coin design („large
skew” type).
A characteristic of the coins’ design which
is most likely to be intentional concerns the size of
the coin’s pattern in relation to the coin itself. In
the case of the obverse side of the Brukenthal
National Museum’s coin as depicted in fig. 1 we
have a „small” design in relation to the total coin.
Figure 3 gives an example of a „large” design11.
Kroll and Waggoner write that the
„stylistic break between the Small skew and Large
skew coins” is „almost certainly a result of the
Persian presence in Central Greece in 480-479,
which inevitably would have caused an interruption
in minting”12. Thus we can be quite sure that the
present coin was minted before ca. 480 BC. The
date cannot have been long before that since the
previous epoch with the concentric intersection
lasted until about 500 BC.
In dating the Brukenthal National
Museum’s coin one could go also by the obverse
motif, the turtle. The (intact) left for a leg on the
Brukenthal National Museum’s coin shows by its
length and shape that we have here a sea turtle.
This is significant because the design on the
Aeginetan coins change that one stage from
depicting a sea-turtle (Chelone caouana) like the
11 Head 1888, p. 317.
12 Waggoner 1984, p. 337.
15
one on the Brukenthal National Museum’s coin to
depicting land-tortoises (Testudo Graeca) as
characteristic design according to Head13. There is
some debate exactly when that change took place.
According to Head14, the change occurred after the
return of the Aeginetans to their island in 404 BC
after they had been driven away by the Athenians
in 431 BC. According to Kraay, however, the sea
turtle type design „probably continued in use until
Aegina was captured by Athens in 457-456 BC”15.
He thereby refers to the first important military
victory o f Athens over Aegina. The Aeginetans
retained some autonomy at that time, however, and
might have continued to mint coins. According to
these considerations the change from sea turtles to
land tortoises might have occurred around 455 BC.
In both cases the explanation for the
change could be that it was meant to signify that
the Aeginetans abandoned any claims to „ruling
the waves”, that they resigned to being „land
tortoises” themselves. There is some further
speculation about the Aeginetan variants of turtles
and tortoises in the numismatic literature16. It need
not concern us here, however, because the coin
falls into an epoch when there was still the
traditional design.
As far as historic circumstances are
concerned, there is wide-spread agreement that it
was only after ca.480 BC that Aegina’s maritime
dominance was challenged - especially by its
neighbor Athens. The turtle design of the
Brukenthal National Museum’s obol suggests that
it belongs to the earlier time when Aegina still was
dominant in maritime trade or maintained the claim
for such dominance.
There is an additional element which is
important for dating the coin: the T-shaped pellets
on the back of the turtle. Kraay writes about this
element: „soon after 479 BC... the carapaces of the
turtles are decorated with pellets arranged in the
form of a T”17, He adds: „On the reverse the skew
pattern, which had become current about 500 BC,
continued in use, but in a much more spacious form
with thick bands separating the incuse elements of
the design”18. Thus Kraay associates the
appearance of the T- formed pellets with the „large
13 Head 1911, p. 397.
14 Head 1911, p. 397.
15 Kraay 1976, p. 46.
16 See Sheedy 2012, p. 108, concerning the land tortoise:
„Pethaps it was introduced simply to separate the current
issues o f the mint from the huge quantity o f worn (and largely
below weight) turtle staters that remained in circulation
throughout Greece”.
17 Kraay 1976, p. 46.
18 Kraay 1976, p. 46.
 Moneda §i comert in Sud Estul Europei, IV, 2012
Gerhard Michael Ambrosi
skew” design. But the Brukenthal National
Museum’s coin is of the earlier, the „small skew”
type. This indicates then that it must have been a
forerunner of the changes which Kraay described.
This is a further indication that the coins should be
dated at 480 BC or shortly before that date.
4. The turtle
The „trademark” of Aeginetan coins is the
sea turtle or, in a younger epoch, the land tortoise.
As the geometrical design on the reverse
side of the coin showed great variation of the
theme of „square and transversals”, so does the
obverse theme of the turtle or the tortoise.
Figure 4: The Brukenthal version of the
Aeginetan turtle.
The turtle emblem on the Aeginetan coins
suggests, first of all, the question what this animal
stands for. It has been suggested that it is
associated with Aphrodite, the goddess of love.
There is a famous precedent for such an
interpretation, namely the Athenian „owls” -coins
which, on their reverse side have the owl of
wisdom. This bird is undoubtedly associated with
Athena, the protective goddess of Athens. The
analogous divine interpretation of the Aeginetan
turtle seems to be supported by Pausanias. He had
visited Aegina in 150 AD19. There are a few lines
in his Description o f Greece [2.29.6] according to
which there is an Aeginetan temple dedicated to
Aphrodite. The passage claims that it stood near to
the main harbor. But the rains overlooking the
present main harbor of Aegina belong to a temple
dedicated to Apollo, and not to Aphrodite. There is
a second harbor, however, and maybe Pausanias
referred to that one when mentioning the temple
for Aphrodite. But it is for sure that Aegina’s
ancient divine protector was not Aphrodite but
19 Welter 1938, p. 46.
16
Apollo20. In this regard an analogy is not warranted
which compares Aegina’s turtles with Athens’
numismatic association with Athena and her
companion animal, the owl.
The case of an Aeginetan association with
Aphrodite is made complicated by the fact that in
the final stage of independent coinage (around 350
BC) the Aeginetans adorned the obverse or the
reverse side or both sides of their coins with
representations of dolphins as well -another
companion animal of Aphrodite -thus seemingly
confirming this association. But it might well be
that by that time the Aeginetans themselves had
forgotten about the origin of the „trademark” of
their coins.
A secular explanation for Aegina’s turtle
coins is suggested by the modern Greek word for
„ingots” which is the same as that for turtles21. This
accords well with the theory of Welter that before
they used minted coins, the Aeginetans used silver
ingots in their foreign trade. For technical reasons,
these ingots had a form similar to a turtle’s back. It
was Welter’s suggestion that the coin emblem
derived onomatopoeically from this similarity and
not from any mythical or heraldic background'-.
5. A geometric characterization
We suggested above that the design of the
coin under consideration is based on some
underlying geometrical pattern which, however,
might have been imperfectly executed. Taking up
this idea, we re-draw the coin’s pattern as shown
on the right half of fig. 5.
The 45“ line extending from the lower
right corner might then appear as part of a diagonal
as sketched by the broken white line. The
transversals on the coin design could then appear
as being based on two legs (plus extensions) of an
isosceles triangle as shown on the left half of fig. 5.
Figure 5: The Brukenthal National Museum’s
coin’s geometrical pattern.
20 Welter 1938.
21 Kroll 2008, p. 35sq.: „the word for ‘ingot’ in Modern Greek
is in fact chelone - ‘turtle’, a usage that may well go back to
early times”. See also the entry for ..Greek”, under
http://www.answers.com/topic/ifigot. accessed on June 3,
2012 .
22 Welter 1954, p. 29.
 Moneda §i comert in Slid Estul Europei, IV, 2012
An Aeginetan coin in the Brukenthal National Museum
In this construction the intersection of the
two transversals appears as lying at the meeting
point of two (imaginary) squares, a small one at the
upper left and a larger one at the lower right. When
we look at the Brukenthal National Museum’s coin
itself there is, however, no obvious and direct
evidence supporting the idea that the Aeginetans
did think about such sub-squares when they
designed the pattern for their coins. But we must
put the pattern of the present coin in a wider
context of (later) Aeginetan coin design.
Figure 6: A mixture of Aeginetan coins’
transversals.
Thus, when we compare the Brukenthal
National Museum’s coin design with an Aeginetan
coin as depicted in fig. 623, however, then we see
that there are cases of Aeginetan reverse-side coin
design where at least one transversal is
perpendicular to the side of a surrounding square.
There are also cases in which the transversals are
both perpendicular as in the case of the Aeginetan
coin depicted in fig. 7. In this latter case the sub­
squares are not imaginary any more but they are
drawn on the ancient coins themselves.
Figure 7: Further „post-Brukenthal” cases of
Aeginetan coins’ transversals.
The white lines on the coin depicted in fig.
724 show now Clearly the pattern of a large square
25 Head 1911, plate XXIV available online
http://www.snible.org/coins/bmc/attica/XXIV.jpg, accessed
June 2, 2012.
24 Head 1911, plate XXIV, available online
http://www.snible.org/coins/bmc/attica/XXIV.jpg, accessed
17
containing two sub-squares in the way which we
suggested as conceptual background in connection
with our construction on the left half of fig. 5.
It is now an interesting aside to note that
this rectangular pattern is the same as one which
we find in Euclid’s Elements15. It is striking that
Euclid’s theorem II.4 uses the same pattern as this
last variant of Aeginetan coins26.
The geometrical sketch to the right of this
coin gives a synopsis of the possible directions of
the transversals. It shows that in principle there is
always the 45° line as drawn from the lower right
comer and the intersection point of the transversals
is always off the middle of the surrounding large
square. As already emphasized, not all coins follow
the stated patterns in an exact way, but the patterns
just discussed may be taken as quite characteristic.
From these considerations it follows that
the Brukenthal National Museum’s coin stands in
an interesting context of elaborate geometrical coin
design - a phenomenon which probably stands in
relation with the unfolding of Greek mathematics
in the 6th and 5th century BC27.
6. Concluding remarks
The Aeginetan silver obolos in the
possession of the Brukenthal National Museum in
Sibiu, Romania, is a very interesting specimen.
The significance of this small coin from about 480
BC lies not so much in the splendor of its
appearance but in its typicality.
The obolos is a minor denomination of
Aeginetan coinage. The typical Aeginetan coin is
the silver stater which has about the twelve-fold of
the weight of the silver obolos. But the difference
between stater and obolos is not as great as the
difference in weight might suggest since the
appearance of both denominations are quite
similar. The emblem of the Brukenthal National
Museum’s coin on its obverse side - a turtle - and
its geometrical pattern on the reverse side are
typical for a centuries old tradition in Aeginetan
coinage. Thus this little coin is rich in historical
and conceptual associations to which it gives
occasion.
The historically most interesting aspect of
this coin stems from its origin in Aegina, a small
island near Athens. The coin thus represents a
June 2, 2012
25 See Heath 1956.
Z6Artmann 1990, p. 47: „What we now see is precisely the
diagram o f Euclid’s theorem IL4; just the diagonal in the
smaller square is missing... Euclid 11.4 is the geometrical
version o f the binomial theorem (a+b)^'=<P'+2ab+b^'”.
27 See Ambrosi 2012 for some elaboration o f this point.
 Moneda §i comert in Sud Estul Europei, IV, 2012
Gerhard Michael Ambrosi
place where - so it was reported since antiquity -
the first coins were made in the European part of
ancient Greece. This means also that the very first
coins which were made on the European continent
also come from Aegina because the only earlier
precedents in the ancient Greek world come from
Asia Minor.
The turtle emblem on the Brukenthal
National Museum’s coin has a long Aeginetan
tradition and goes back to the earliest time of
coinage. The turtle is a linguistic and a visual
reminder that Aeginetan trade in pre-monetary
times was probably done with silver ingots as
means of payment. In Greek language the words
„turtle” and „ingot” are homonyms and the ancient
silver ingots are said to have had a turtle-back
shape. The turtle emblem can thus be interpreted as
a bridge between the times of pre-monetary and o f
monetary exchange28. It is this a transition which
Aristotle later (ca. 330 BC) describes in Politics
(I.iii. .§’14) when he writes that „for the purpose of
barter men... [used] silver and other metals, at the
first stage defined merely by size and weight, but
finally also by impressing on it a stamp in order
that this might relieve them of having to measure
it”29.
The Aeginetans’ silver trade must have
been enormously profitable. Herodotus (Histories
IV, 152) relates that Samian traders made greatest
profit from silver trade but that their profit was
surpassed by that of „Sostratus of Aegina, son of
Laodamas; with him none could vie”30. It is
possible that this name „Sostratus” stands for
Aeginetan financial wealth in general. We noted
above that for Aristotle (Metaphysics 1015a25) it
was as „necessary” to sail to Aegina for monetary
matters as it is „ necessary” to take medicine when
one is ill. The exact nature of the ^monetary
matters” alluded to in this passage is not quite clear
but according to Welter we have to see in Aegina
the cradle of capitalism itself31.
It is possible that Aeginetan money was
also „necessary” in distant places of the Greek
world for more trivial matters other than
capitalistic ventures. Hultsch gives a few
28 A „possib!e connection between early coins and the prior
circulation o f silver bullion may be reflected in the turtle type
o f Aeginetan coinage” (Kroll 2008, p. 36, n. 74).
29 Rackham 1959, p. 43.
30 Godley 1921, p. 355. For the historical person named
„Sostratus” see sect. 1 in: Schweizer 2007, p. 307. it deals
with „Sostratos von Aigina. Spuren eines Individuums”, i.e.
with the question whether we have here an identifiable
individuum.
51 Welter 1954, p. 30, fh. 4 above.
18
examples32. Thus he draws attention to the fact that
in Sparta the contribution to the customary
common meals had to be paid in Aeginetan obols -
the Brukenthal National Museum's coin under
discussion33. But it might well have been just the
accounting value of Aeginetan obols which was
fixed. Hultsch mentions also a treaty of 382 BC in
which monetary matters between Sparta and its
northern allies were regulated in terms of
Aeginetan currency. In many cases such provisions
could have been just matters of accountancy. But it
seems that for many transactions purposes it was
indeed strongly „necessary” (Aristotle) to have
Aeginetan coins.
In addition to monetary associations which
we may combine with the Aeginetan coin there are
also important mathematical ones which modern
commentators have probably not yet fully worked
out. The incuse side of the Aeginetan coins was
worked in geometrical patterns from a very early
time onwards. The Brukenthal National Museum's
coin has, in the wording of numismatic catalogues,
a „small skew” design which means that inside the
round circumference the coin has a square with two
skew transversal lines and a 45° line connecting
the intersection of the transversals with a comer of
the square. This design stands conceptually
between an older design with eight transversals,
intersecting centrally in a square and a later design
where there are perpendicular transversals which
intersect eccentrically in a square. The latter design
has been related to Euclid’s Elements34, while a
skew transversal case has been related to Euclid’s
Book on Divisions35. The present author has argued
that both types of designs with eccentrically
intersecting transversals anticipate a number of
passages in Plato’s dialogues36, in particular those
where Plato deals with mathematical
incommensurability. In the latter interpretation it is
also argued that the Aeginetan coin design can be
seen as having relations to cosmological world
views. In the case of the skew transversals the
relation is to the elementary forms of Timaeus’
cosmology as elaborated in Plato’s eponymous
dialogue and as commented briefly by Karl
Popper37. In the case of the perpendicular
transversals one can see a relation between this
32 Hultsch 1882. p. 191.
33 The source is Dicaearchus, Fragment 87, concerning the
messes [the common meals in Sparta]: „Each contributes to
the m ess... for the meat dish about twelve Aeginetan obols”
(Fortenbangh - Schutrumpf 2001, p. 91).
34 Artmann 1990; Artmann 1999.
35 Aboav 2008.
36 Ambrosi 2012.
37 Popper 1950.
 Moneda §i comert in Sud Estul Europei, IV, 2012
An Aeginetan coin in the Brukenthal National Museum

geometrical construction and Heraclitus’s famous

fragment stating that the cosmological turnover of
fire and matter is like the economic monetary
turnover between coins and goods. But to elaborate
this point would lead too far away from the present
object of enquiry.
Let it suffice to claim that the above
remarks should have shown sufficiently well that
the Aeginetan coin in the Brukenthal National
Museum is a very interesting numismatic vestige of
coinage, Commerce and human history. Its
relevance for today is nicely illustrated by an
internet page of the Greek Alpha Bank which
reads: „The first coins in Greece were struck in
Aegina, during the 6lh century B.C. The reverse of
these first coins of Greece became the logo of the
Alpha Bank”38. In order to substantiate this
statement the authors of Alpha Bank’s web page
illustrate it with the „large skew” version of the
same pattern which is on the Brukenthal National
Museum’s obolus from Aegina.

38 http://www.alphanumismatics.gr/index.aspx?lang=en,
accessed on June 7,2012.

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 Moneda §i comert in Sud Estul Europei, IV, 20L2
An Aeginetan coin in the Brukenthal National Museum

ABSTRACT

The article describes and comments an Aeginetan silver obolus in the numismatic collection o f the
Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, Romania. This coin has not been published before. It is a typical
specimen from ca. 480 BC. It has the Aegina-typical turtle emblem on the obverse and a „small skew” design
on the reverse side. By the term „skew” it is meant that the incuse is in the form o f a square which is cut by
two non-perpendicular transversal lines with an intersection along the diagonal o f the square, the diagonal
being only partly drawn as a 45° line to the intersection point. By „small” it is meant that the incuse square
covers only part o f the coin’s reverse side. Aeginetan coins which were minted a few years later have a
„ large ” reverse pattern o f an otherwise similar appearance, but covering more o f the coins' surface.
The coin's sea turtle emblem is not quite complete because the coin’s edge is trimmed in part. But
since its weight is near to that which is to be expected from an Aeginetan obolus, the trimming might have
been intentional so that the official weight is kept. Although the coin shows the effect o f usage, it is still
visible that the turtle's back is adorned with five pellets, arranged in a T-shaped pattern. There is some
debate in the literature whether the turtle emblem is to be treated as sign o f an association with goddess
Aphrodite. It is more likely that the emblem expresses that in Greek language „turtle” and „ingot” are
homonyms. Aeginetan coins were the first coins originating from a European location and the turtle
emblem is a reminder that before coinage Aegina's foreign trade was conducted with silver ingots as means
ofpayment.
The specific geometric reverse pattern suggests that the coin was minted shortly before the Persian
invasion o f Greece in the years 480-479 BC because during the military action normal minting activity
probably had stopped. There was a change from „small skew ” design to „ large skew” design at some
unspecified date around that time. But such change is likely to have occurred in the course o f the resumption
o f normal life after the victory over the Persian invaders.

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 Moneda §i comert in Sud EstuI Europei, IV, 2012
Gerhard Michael Ambrosi

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