Sale: Triton V, Lot: 1541. Estimate $2500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 16 January 2002.  Sold For $3000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

EGYPT, Ptolemaic Kings. Ptolemy V. 205-180 BC. AR Tetradrachm (14.17 gm). Circa 202-200 BC. Phoenician mint. Diademed bust of Ptolemy IV / Eagle on thunderbolt; Q left, NI between legs. Svoronos -; Mørkholm, "Portrait Coinage of Ptolemy V," in Essays Thompson, issue IX with obverse die A13 (unlisted with this issue); SNG Copenhagen -; see CNG Auction 38, lot 568 for another example from the same pair of dies. Lightly toned, near EF. Very rare. ($2500)

From the Robert Schonwalter Collection.

Same obverse die as the previous lot. The portrait coinage of Ptolemy V is a distinctive series in an otherwise monotonous succession of increasingly stereotyped renditions of the features of the founder of the dynasty, Ptolemy I. Mørkholm argued that, if not all, of these portrait types were struck in Phoenician mints, many of the types being die-linked with mint marked pieces from Sidon, and most of the hoards being found in that region. In addition, the interlinking of dies within each series points to a limited period of minting, perhaps for only a few years after 202 BC, when Ptolemy V was fighting a losing battle to keep his Phoenician territories from falling to Antiochos III of Syria. His portrait types, along with scarcer types showing his parents Ptolemy IV and Arsinoe III, lent immediacy to the Ptolemaic presence in Phoenicia. The portraits of Ptolemy's parents appear later in Mørkholm's sequence, beginning with issue XI. This pairing of die A13 (Ptolemy IV) with issue IX slightly adjusts his internal grouping of this series.