ORC_6615 Archaic Unpublished Cyprus, VF
Item #390959785
$650.00
Aug-03-00
oldromancoins.com

ORC6615 Archaic Unpublished Cyprus, VF

Uncertain Mint, Cyprus, probably Tamasos, AR diobol, (1.61g) 
c. 550 BC, Bearded head left. / Incuse. Unpublished. VF

A difficult attribution. Tamasos is a central ancient
Kingdom in Cyprus with no numismatic evidence so far. The 
style of this piece does not match any other Cypriot archaic 
coins.
Given the size of the city and its independence in the
early Archaic period, one would expect to find some coinage.

No one has to date assigned any coinage to the city. A small
number of coins were found by Buchholz during his
excavations in the 60's. He has never published what he 
found other than to re-iterate that no coinage can be 
attributed to Tamasos.

One interesting note on the rarity of ALL the coinage of the
central/northern cities (including Tamasos) - Schwabacher 
was able to prove that each of the northern cities (plus 
Idalion, so by implication Tamasos which is nearby), had 
only a single pair of dies. Over a 60-100 year period each 
city kept recutting the one pair of dies they had, including 
re-cutting the inscription when the ruler changed. Given 
that they had only one pair of dies, he thinks the coinage 
of these cities was more ''prestige'' than for actual use -
that most of the coinage actually used was from elsewhere 
(notably Asia Minor). This explains the rarity of all 
coinage from these cities during the Archaic period (e.g., 
there are only 2-3 known examples of most of the coinage,
excluding the three large hoards -- all of which have always 
been in museums).