Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 1094. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $5750. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

REVOLT of the HERACLII. 608-610 AD. AV Solidus (4.47 gm). Mint in Cyprus or Syria. dN hERACLI US PP AV, crowned, draped, and cuirassed facing bust (resembling Phocas), holding globus cruciger / VICTORIA AVGU, angel standing facing, holding long staff surmounted by a Christogram and globus cruciger; IP/CONOB. DOC II 186 (Alexandria); MIB II 76 (Cyprus); BN 1 (Alexandria); BMC Wroth 1 (Constantinople); SB 850 (Jerusalem). Superb EF. Extremely rare. [See color enlargement on plate 20] ($4000)

From the Glenn Woods Collection.

Recent evidence has cast doubt upon the attribution by S. Bendall and M. F. Hendy of this and the later solidi, SB 852-852A, to the mint of Jerusalem. It is clearly an issue of a subsidiary mint in the east, but no definitive conclusion can be drawn as regards to place and date of origin. Nevertheless, the use of a Phocas portrait for this type, unique for a Heraclius solidus, could point to it being struck near the end of the revolt of Heraclius (circa 610 AD), when Heraclius had been proclaimed emperor, but with a formal imperial imago yet to be prepared. This unknown subsidiary mint, signed I, IX, or IP, struck solidi to pay eastern troops loyal to Heraclius, and apparently operated sporadically as a replacement for the mint of Antioch, which had been shut down by Heraclius in 610 AD. The (IP) mint itself disappears shortly after the Sasanian invasion of the eastern provinces in 614 AD.