CNG 108, Lot: 393. Estimate $5000. Sold for $4750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PTOLEMAIC KINGS of EGYPT. Ptolemy IV Philopator. 222-205/4 BC. AR Tetradrachm (26mm, 14.28 g, 12h). Alexandreia mint. Struck circa 217-215/0 BC. Jugate draped busts right of Serapis and Isis / BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΠTOΛEMAIOY, eagle standing left, head right, on thunderbolt; filleted double cornucopia over shoulder, ΔI between legs. Svoronos 1124; Landvatter Group 1, 1-27 (unlisted dies); SNG Copenhagen 197-8; Noeske 139; Boston MFA 2284; SNG Berry 1488; Dewing 2760. EF, toned, minor flan crack.

Ex Dr. Walter Stoecklin Collection (†1981).

This type is thought to have been issued in celebration of the Ptolemaic victory over the Seleukids at the battle of Raphia during the Fourth Syrian War. Official propaganda proclaimed that these two deities, Serapis and Isis, had intervened on behalf of the Egyptians, saving them from defeat (see C. Lorber, “The Ptolemaic Era Coinage Revisited,” NC 2007, p. 116, and L. Bricault, “Serapis et Isis, Sauveurs de Ptolémé IV à Raphia,” Chronique d’Égypte LXXIV (1999), pp. 334-43).

Thomas Landvatter, in his die study cited above that appeared in the 2012 ANS American Journal of Numismatics (Second Series, Vol. 24, p. 88), suggests that this issue was “carrying a very specific ideological message directed more widely throughout the empire: Ptolemy IV was equating himself and his wife Arsinoe with the divine sibling-spouses Serapis and Isis.” Landvatter also notes that “[t]his was an ideological statement made during wartime, meant to have wide appeal and explicitly associate the Ptolemaic king and queen with two of the most popular deities in the Eastern Mediterranean.” Indeed, the popularity of the Serapis/Isis cult would outlive the Ptolemaic dynasty and continue well into the Roman Imperial period, only to be eventually usurped by the Christian and Muslim faiths.