Massive Commemorative Silver Issue
PTOLEMAIC KINGS of EGYPT. Berenike II, wife of Ptolemy III. Circa 244/3-221 BC. AR Pentakaidekadrachm (41.5mm, 51.81 g, 12h). Alexandreia mint(?). Struck under Ptolemy III, 245 BC. Veiled and draped bust right / BAΣIΛIΣΣHΣ BEPENIKHΣ, cornucopia, bound with fillet, between two laureate pileoi. CPE 734; Svoronos 988; D. Vagi, “The Ptolemaic Pentakaidekadrachm” in
SAN XX.1 (1997), pp. 5-10; H.A. Hazard,
Ptolemaic Coins (Toronto, 1995), c1052 (dodecadrachm); SNG Copenhagen –; BMC –. Toned, traces of find patina, typical slight roughness, minor delamination at edge on obverse, minor flan crack. Good VF.
Ex Heritage 3102 (2 November 2022), lot 31030; WTR Collection (Heritage 3097, 10 January 2022), lot 30039; John Whitney Walter Collection (Stack’s Bowers Galleries, 16 August 2018), lot 20085; Stack’s (2 December 1997), lot 644.
The issue has traditionally been attributed to Berenike II, the daughter of Magas of Kyrene, and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes. Hazard had proposed instead that it honored Berenike Syra, the sister of Ptolemy III and widow of the Seleukid king Antiochos II Theos. He argued that the coins were struck in Syria from locally-acquired silver 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 these coins were carried back to Egypt by the soldiers as pay. However, his argument was contingent upon the recognition that these were struck on the Attic standard, which is now not accepted. As noted in CPE this issue actually was a silver companion to a massive gold double mnaieion (double oktadrachm), that together represented a ceremonial coinage at Alexandreia whose types suggested they were associated with the Third Syrian War. If so, they presumably were issued to celebrate the successful return of Ptolemy III to Egypt from the battlefield.
