New Variety

264, Lot: 240. Estimate $200. Sold for $575. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PTOLEMAIC KINGS of EGYPT. Ptolemy V Epiphanes. 204-180 BC. AR Tetradrachm (25mm, 12.90 g, 1h). Uncertain military mint in Phoenicia. Diademed and draped bust of Ptolemy V right, diadem adorned with grain ear / Eagle standing left on thunderbolt; no controls. Svoronos -; SNG Copenhagen -; Mørkholm, Ptolemaic Group I, - (A2/P -). Near VF, toned, lightly porous.

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 most, 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 Arsinoë III, lent immediacy to the Ptolemaic presence in Phoenicia.

This is an apparently unrecorded variety with no controls on the reverse. This obverse die is recorded by Mørkholm paired with reverse dies with a ME monogram (Svoronos 1264), an Σ (Svoronos 1293) and an M (Svoronos 1263).