Sale: CNG 63, Lot: 725. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2003.  Sold For $5500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

PTOLEMAIC KINGS of EGYPT. Berenike, sister of Ptolemy III. AR Pentadrachm (19.40 gm). Struck circa 246-221 BC. Diademed and veiled bust right / Cornucopiae bound with fillet between two pilei. Svoronos 989; SNG Copenhagen -. Near EF, some edge damage at 6:00 and light field marks. Very rare. ($5000)

Most scholars, including Otto Mørkholm, have attributed this issue to Berenike II, wife of Ptolemy III, but in his new monograph, Ptolemaic Coins: An Introduction For Collectors, R.A. Hazzard argues for an attribution to Berenike, Ptolemy's sister and widow of the Seleukid king, Antiochos II. Under the terms of Berenike's marriage arrangement with Antiochos II, he was to disinherit his elder children by his prior wife, Laodike, and bequeath the throne to Berenike's son. But this agreement was violated when Antiochos II died at Laodike's home under suspicious circumstances, and "she claimed that he had changed his will at the last moment and had left his throne to Seleucus II, her son. Berenice asked her brother to support her dynastic claims, and he marched his army from Alexandria to Antioch, where the crowds greeted him warmly... He soon discovered that the Seleucid party had killed Berenice and her child, although her attendants had suppressed word of her death until her brother had arrived at Antioch. According to Polyaenus (8.50), Ptolemy III continued to suppress the news and started to dispatch letters in the name of his sister and nephew, as though they were still alive. Ptolemy was able by this ruse to get the nominal support of governors of provinces from as far west as the Tarsus to as far east as the Euphrates. Because his intervention required funds, he gathered about 40,000 talents of silver and authorized a silver and gold coinage in the name of his dead sister. This coinage, struck on the Attic weight standard for the Ptolemaic army in Syria, included some of the largest pieces ever minted by the ancients: silver dodecadrachms, silver pentadrachms, silver 2 1/2 drachms, gold decadrachms, gold pentadrachms, gold 2 1/2 drachms, gold drachms, gold hemidrachms, and gold trihemiobols. All of these coins bore the diademed and veiled bust of Berenice, sister of Ptolemy III, on the obverse, while a horn of plenty and a legend BERENIKHS BASILISSHS appeared on the reverse. The silver pieces showed a round cap on either side of the cornucopiae; the gold pieces showed a star in the same positions. These symbols alluded to the apotheosis of the queen, whose spirit, like Arsinoe's before her, had been lifted to heaven by the Dioscuri on the evening of her death." Hazzard continues: "Ptolemy III seemed to be meeting every success when he heard of a revolt so menacing in his own kingdom that he turned his army around and marched it back to Egypt in an effort to restore order. His army carried Berenice's coins with it, so that these gold and silver pieces have often turned up in the Egyptian delta. Because they have turned up in that region, O. Mørkholm supposed that the mint of Alexandria coined them about 245 and that they depicted the head of Berenice II, the daughter of Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III. The present writer (Hazzard) has dismissed this theory for three reasons. In the first place, the find sites of the coins do not necessarily imply where circulation commenced, but where it ended. In the second place, the portraits on the coins do not resemble the image of Berenice II on gold octadrachms struck at Ephesus under Ptolemy III (Svoronos 899 and 900). In the third place, the Ptolemies had abandoned the Attic standard for their coins about 310. Mørkholm himself confessed that 'the use of the Attic standard at this date at the mint of Alexandria has not yet received a satisfactory explanation.'" (See Otto Mørkholm, The Early Hellenistic Coinage, Cambridge 1991).