Sale: CNG 63, Lot: 1104. Estimate $400.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2003.  Sold For $1500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

EGYPT, Alexandria. Diocletian. 284-305 AD. Æ or Potin "Didrachm" (4.98 gm). Festival of Isis Coinage. DIOKLHTIANOC CEB, laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / IC IC, Isis standing left, crowned, holding sistrum and sceptre. Cf. Emmett 4090 (one tetradrachm cited); vide Vagi II, pp. 566-9. Near EF, smoothed dark brown patina. ($400)

The other published examples of the tetradrachm are in Triton VI (14 January 2003), lot 605 and Münz Zentrum 73 (22-24 April 1992), lot 1399 (DM 1325). This smaller denomination is unpublished. 

The Isis festival was a major celebration in Rome in the 3rd and 4th centuries, heralding the arrival of the ship of Isis (navigium Isidis) from Alexandria on the 5th of March. Such coins or tokens were first struck by Diocletian at Rome to mark the arrival of the ship, but this item, with its Alexandrian flan and Greek legend, was clearly struck in Egypt, perhaps upon the ship's departure. It may be one of the last issues struck in Alexandria before the closure of the mint in 296 AD. Alföldi proposes that the festival associated with the Isis ship (also known as carrus navalis) became, in the Middle Ages, the carne levare or carnival.