Ex Virgil Brand Collection

CNG 93, Lot: 618. Estimate $5000. Sold for $7000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PTOLEMAIC KINGS of EGYPT. Berenike II, wife of Ptolemy III. Circa 244/3-221 BC. AV Hemidrachm (10mm, 1.52 g, 12h). Alexandreia mint. Struck under Ptolemy III, circa 242/1-222 BC. Bust right, wearing stephane and veil / BAΣIΛIΣΣHΣ BEPENIKHΣ, filleted cornucopia. Svoronos 983, pl. XXXV, 15 (same obv. die); SNG Copenhagen –; Noeske 115; Boston MFA –; Dewing –; BMC 15. Good VF, minor die deterioration, tiny nick on neck and scratch before bust, metal flaws on reverse. Very rare.

Ex Property of Princeton Economics acquired by Martin Armstrong (Classical Numismatic Group Electronic Auction 271, 11 January 2012), lot 24 (sold for hammer $13,000, but not paid); Triton II (1 December 1998), lot 534; Virgil M. Brand Collection (Part 3, Sotheby's, 9 June 1983), lot 183; H.C. Hoskier Collection (J. Hirsch XX, 13 November 1907), lot 456.

The series has traditionally been attributed to Berenike II, the daughter of Magas of Kyrene and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes. In his book, Ptolemaic Coins: An Introduction for Collectors (Toronto: Kirk & Bentley, 1995), Hazard has proposed instead that it honored Berenike Syra, the sister of Ptolemy III and widow of the Seleukid king Antiochos II Theos. Hazard argued (pp. 4-5) that the coins were struck in Syria from locally-acquired silver – no mention is made of the source for the gold – to pay the Ptolemaic army deployed there to press the claim of Berenike’s child to the Seleukid throne, though the two had been murdered in the interim, and that, as pay, these coins were carried back to Egypt by the soldiers. The use of the long-discontinued Attic standard, he argued, implies a provincial mint rather than Alexandreia. While Hazard’s placement of the series in an historical context is plausible, he assumed the entire series was struck on the Attic standard, which had been the traditional view since Svoronos’ time, so he does not address the question of the two standards.

A passage from Polyainos (8.50) provides a possible explanation. According to him, Ptolemy III continued to suppress the news regarding the death of his sister and his nephew – going so far as to forge letters in her name – until he had gained the nominal support of governors in the border territories of the Seleukid Empire – areas as far west as Tarsos and as far east as the Euphrates. As funds would be required to consolidate their support, the Attic weight Berenike gold denominations would make perfect sense, since some of these areas still employed that weight standard, and gold would be a perfect diplomatic medium. The coinage struck on the Ptolemaic/Phoenician standard then, would have been meant for payment to those Ptolemaic forces or allies in the Levant, where such a weight system was already in place. Thus, it is possible that the concurrent issues of two different weight standards could have been struck at the Alexandreia mint. Given the city's size and central importance in the Ptolemaic Empire, the mint there could have easily handled the task and seems the most likely candidate for the series’ production. If such coins were struck at cities under Ptolemaic control in the Levant, however, the mints there could have easily produced fine style dies to rival Alexandreia's craftsmen.