← All coins

Ptolemy III Zeus-Ammon / Eagle Bronze Hemidrachm

Type · ptolemy-iii-zeus-ammon-eagle-bronze

My specimens (1)

ptolemy-iii-zeus-ammon-eagle-bronze-001

42.814 g (tag) · 37.5 mm · axis 0° · F, well centered

The eastern Mediterranean of the Hellenistic kingdoms (the map shows the world of 281 BC, a generation before this coin). Alexandria — circled in red — commands the western edge of the Nile Delta, the royal capital and mint of the Ptolemaic Kingdom (yellow). The kingdom’s overseas holdings visible here — Cyprus, Cyrenaica, and the Levantine coast contested in the Syrian Wars — are the world Ptolemy III’s fleets and armies dominated at the dynasty’s height.

Image source & licence

Base map by Cattette (Wikimedia Commons), “Seleucid Empire alternative map” (extracted from “The Hellenistic World in late 281 BC”), File:Seleucid Empire alternative map.jpg, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seleucid_Empire_alternative_map.jpg; license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Modified by JSB Coins: cropped to the eastern Mediterranean, and a red circle added to mark Alexandria. This derivative is shared under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

Alexandria, on the western edge of the delta, struck this bronze — and the map is drawn for about 270 BC, within a generation of it. The dotted line is the approximate reach of Ptolemaic control, which is the empire this coin’s eagle stood for: Egypt itself, the Cyrenaica to the west, and a Levantine coast held against the Seleukids. Ammon, in the western desert, is the oracle whose ram’s horns Zeus wears on the obverse.

Catalogue References

• Lorber CPE B371 current
• Svoronos 974 var (E between legs, per the tag; Forum's listing reads the monogram EP) current
• SNG Copenhagen 229 (as Ptolemy IV) superseded
• Weiser 92 (as Ptolemy IV) superseded
• Noeske 161 (as Ptolemy IV) superseded
• Hosking 44 (as Ptolemy IV) superseded

Historical Context

The Benefactor’s Big Bronze

Nothing announces the strangeness and confidence of Ptolemaic Egypt’s money like its bronze. This is a coin of nearly 43 grams — heavier than ten silver tetradrachms — struck at Alexandria for a kingdom that had deliberately walled its currency off from the rest of the Greek world. On the obverse, Zeus-Ammon: the king of the Greek gods wearing the ram’s horn of the Egyptian Amun, the two faiths fused in a single profile. On the reverse, the eagle on the thunderbolt that Ptolemy I made the badge of his house, with the cornucopia of dynastic plenty rising behind its shoulder and the legend that never changed: ΠΤΟΛΕΜΑΙΟΥ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ, “of King Ptolemy.”

Egypt’s closed currency

The Ptolemies ran the ancient world’s most tightly managed monetary system. Foreign silver had to be exchanged at the border for Ptolemaic coin (struck on the kingdom’s own reduced standard), and within Egypt an enormous bronze coinage did work that silver did elsewhere — wages, rents, taxes, the daily economy of the Nile valley. The big bronzes of the third century, of which this is a prime example, were the flagship of that internal currency. Their manufacture was distinctive too: the flans were cast, then faced on a lathe, leaving the neat central dimples visible on both sides of this coin — an Alexandrian workshop signature so characteristic that its absence is a warning sign. Egypt had run its own kind of money for a very long time: two centuries earlier the country was still importing and imitating Athenian owls (the collection’s Egyptian owl tetradrachm is that chapter), and the Ptolemaic closed system was the decisive break with that world.

Euergetes

Ptolemy III Euergetes (“the Benefactor,” r. 246–222 BC) took the dynasty to its zenith. His reign opened with the Third Syrian War — launched, the ancient accounts say, to avenge his sister Berenice, murdered at the Seleucid court; his armies took Antioch and marched as far as Babylon (the campaign echoes cryptically in Daniel 11:7–9, as the dealer’s tag notes). At home he was a builder — the Serapeum at Alexandria, the great temple of Horus at Edfu — and under him the Alexandrian mint poured out the bronze series to which this coin belongs. The dynasty this coinage served would end, two centuries later, with Cleopatra VII, whose silver still carried the same eagle and the same legend.

The queen’s lock and the extra day

Two curiosities of the reign put Euergetes in the sky and in the calendar. When the king marched east in 246 BC, his queen Berenice II vowed a lock of her hair for his safe return and dedicated it in a temple; the lock vanished, and the court astronomer Conon announced that it had been carried up among the stars — the faint sprinkle between Leo and Boötes still called Coma Berenices, “Berenice’s Hair.” Callimachus turned the episode into a court poem whose Latin translation by Catullus (poem 66) preserves it. And in 238 BC a synod of Egyptian priests at Canopus, decreeing honors for the royal pair, ordered among much else that a sixth epagomenal day be added to the Egyptian year every fourth year — the first known legislated leap day, two centuries before Julius Caesar’s Alexandrian astronomers made the idea stick in Rome. Coinage, calendar, and constellation: the big bronzes belong to the same confident machine of a kingdom, all of it managed from the palace quarter of Alexandria.

Ptolemy III or Ptolemy IV?

The tag on this coin is a little museum of attribution history: every older reference it cites — SNG Copenhagen 229, Noeske 161, Hosking 44, Weiser 92 — assigns the type to Ptolemy IV Philopator, while Forum’s listing follows Catharine Lorber’s Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire (2018), which reassigned the series to Ptolemy III as CPE B371, c. 246–230 BC. The reshuffling of the big Zeus-Ammon bronzes between the third-century reigns is one of the main results of Lorber’s corpus, built on hoards, overstrikes, and die studies; this page follows CPE while preserving the Ptolemy IV references for anyone searching the older literature. A small residual: the tag reads the control between the eagle’s legs as E (Svoronos 974 var), Forum’s current listing as an EP monogram — worth checking against the coin in hand.

Sources

Attribution: C. C. Lorber, Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire (ANS, 2018), no. B371; J. Svoronos, Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaion (1904–08), no. 974; the superseded Ptolemy IV references as on the dealer’s tag (SNG Copenhagen 229, Noeske 161, Hosking 44, Weiser 92). The closed Ptolemaic monetary system and the bronze coinage: Lorber, CPE, introduction; D. Wolf’s PtolemAE Project (ptolemybronze.com) for the bronze series framework. Historical frame: the Third Syrian War per the dealer’s description; Daniel 11:7–9 for the biblical allusion. The lock of Berenice: Callimachus, Aetia fr. 110, with Catullus 66; the leap-day reform: the Canopus decree of 238 BC (OGIS 56); the war memorial of the eastern campaign: the Adulis inscription (OGIS 54).

Further reading — Forum’s Ptolemaic bibliography

The reference list below is the standing Ptolemaic bibliography that Forum Ancient Coins prints on its Ptolemaic listings, captured from this coin’s listing (GP76551) — a useful working library for the series, beyond the specific references cited above.

• Aumaître, H. & C. Lorber. “New Evidence Concerning a Mint Imitating Ptolemaic Tetradrachms” in INR 16 (2021), pp. 59–70, pls. 2–5.
• Brett, A. “Dated coins of Ptolemy V, 204–180 B.C.” in ANSMN 2 (1947), pp. 1–11.
• Brooks, E. “The overstruck coinage of Ptolemy I” in ANSMN 6 (1954), pp. 69–84.
• Burnett, A., M. Amandry, et al. Roman Provincial Coinage (1992–).
• Cox, D. Coins from the Excavations at Curium, 1932–1953. ANSNNM 145 (New York, 1959).
• Davesne, A. & G. Le Rider. Gülnar II. Le trésor de Meydancikkale (Paris, 1989).
• Faucher, T., A. Meadows & C. Lorber. Egyptian Hoards I, The Ptolemies (2017).
• Faucher, T. & M. Shahin. “Le Trésor de Gezeir (lac Mariout, Alexandrie)” in RN 162 (2006), pp. 135–157.
• Gitler, H. & D. Master. “Cleopatra at Ascalon: Recent Finds from the Leon Levy Expedition” in INR 5 (2010), pp. 67–98.
• Hill, G. A Catalog of the Greek Coins in the British Museum, Greek Coins of Cyprus (London, 1904).
• Hill, G. Catalogue of Greek Coins in the British Museum: Phoenicia (London, 1910).
• Jenkins, G. “An early Ptolemaic hoard from Phacous” in ANSMN 9 (1960), pp. 17–37.
• Kreuzer, M. The Coinage System of Cleopatra VII, Marc Antony and Augustus in Cyprus (Springfield, MA, 2004).
• Lorber, C. Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire (New York, 2018).
• Macdonald, G. Catalog of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection, Vol. III (Glasgow, 1905).
• Malter, J. The Coinage of Ancient Egypt, Auction II (Encino, CA, 1978).
• Michaelidou, L., ed. Museum of the History of Cypriot Coinage, Coin Catalogue (Nicosia, 1996).
• Michaelidou, L. & E. Zapiti. Coins of Cyprus, From the Collection of the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation (Nicosia, 2008).
• Mildenberg, L. “Yehud: A Preliminary Study of the Provincial Coinage of Judaea” in Essays Thompson.
• Meshorer, Y., et al. Coins of the Holy Land: The Abraham and Marian Sofaer Collection. ACNAC 8 (New York, 2013).
• Mørkholm, O. “Cyprus Hoard, 1982” in NC 147 (1987), pp. 156–158.
• Mørkholm, O. Early Hellenistic Coinage. From the Accession of Alexander to the Peace of Apamea (336–188 BC) (Cambridge, 1991).
• Mørkholm, O. “Ptolemaic coins and chronology: The dated silver coinage of Alexandria” in ANSMN 20 (1975), pp. 7–24.
• Mørkholm, O. “The Ptolemaic ‘coins of an uncertain era’” in Nordisk Numismatisk Årsskrift 1975–1976, pp. 23–58.
• Mørkholm, O. “The last Ptolemaic silver coinage in Cyprus” in Chiron 13 (1983), pp. 69–79.
• Nicolaou, I. Paphos II. The Coins from the House of Dionysos (Nicosia, 1990).
• Noeske, H. Die Münzen der Ptolemäer (Frankfurt, 2000).
• Olivier, J. & T. Faucher. “EH 69. Le Trésor de Paphos (IGCH 1471; CH 2.106; 4.68)” in Egyptian Hoards I (2017), pp. 258–315, pls. 101–224.
• Pitchfork, C. The Jon Hosking Collection of Ptolemaic Coins (Sydney, 2000).
• Poole, R. A Catalog of the Greek Coins in the British Museum, the Ptolemies, Kings of Egypt (London, 1882).
• Robinson, E. A Catalog of the Greek Coins in the British Museum, The Greek Coins of Cyrenaica (London, 1927).
• Rosenberger, M. The Rosenberger Israel Collection (Jerusalem, 1972–1978).
• Sear, D. Greek Coins and Their Values, Volume 2, Asia and Africa (London, 1979).
• Svoronos, J. Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaion (Athens, 1904–08).
• SNG Denmark, Danish National Museum, Vol. 8: Egypt, North Africa, Spain–Gaul (New Jersey, 1994).
• SNG Italy, Milano XIII, Aegyptus, Part 1: Ptolemaei (Milan, 1989).
• Weiser, W. Katalog Ptolemäischer Bronzemünzen der Sammlung des Instituts für Altertumskunde, Universität Köln (Opladen, 1995).
• Visonà, P. “A Hoard of Ptolemaic Bronze Coins in the J. Paul Getty Museum” in J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 6–7 (1978–1979), pp. 153–162.
• Wolf, D. “New Observations on the Ptolemaic Bronze Coinage of Tyre” in INR 11 (2016), pp. 29–46, pls. 4–6.
• Wolf, D. “The ‘Galatian Shield Without Σ’ Series of Ptolemaic Bronze Coins” in NC 171 (2011), pp. 7–52, pls. 1–3.
• Wolf, D. The PtolemAE Project — http://ptolemybronze.com/
• Wolf, D. & C. Lorber. “Syracusan Imitations of the Bronze Diobols of Ptolemy II Philadelphus” (19 March 2009).
• Zervos, O. “The early tetradrachms of Ptolemy I” in ANSMN 13 (1967), pp. 1–16.
• Zervos, O. “The Delta hoard of Ptolemaic ‘Alexanders’” in ANSMN 21 (1976), pp. 37–58.

Notes

A giant of a coin: this specimen 42.814 g and 37.5 mm (dealer data). The paired dimples at the centers of both faces are CENTRATION DIMPLES from the lathe used to face the cast flans — a normal feature of Ptolemaic bronze manufacture, not damage. Denomination naming for the big Ptolemaic bronzes is conventional; Forum (following Lorber's system) calls this module a bronze hemidrachm. ATTRIBUTION HISTORY: the older catalogues on the tag (SNG Cop, Weiser, Noeske, Hosking) place the type under Ptolemy IV; Lorber (CPE, 2018) reassigns it to Ptolemy III, c. 246–230 BC — keep the old references searchable under Ptolemy IV.

References & Further Reading

• Catharine C. Lorber (2018) Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire
  American Numismatic Society (New York, 2018) — the current standard corpus; this type is CPE B371, part of Lorber's reattribution of the big Zeus-Ammon bronzes between Ptolemy III and IV
• Daniel Wolf The PtolemAE Project [link]
  Online resource for Ptolemaic bronze series identification

John's Ancient Coin Collection · Type · ptolemy-iii-zeus-ammon-eagle-bronze

Image credits for this coin — photographs, maps and graphics used on this page