The changing iconography of Byzantine gold coinage | Hacker News Reader

The changing iconography of Byzantine gold coinage

numismatics.org

73 pointsdrdee11 comments

Oh man a numismatic story on HN...count me in! (See my bio item #1)

One of my favorite things about the Byzantine solidi is that, although there are some great (and expensive) rarities among the ones mentioned in the article, they are in general readily available and readily affordable for a nearly 2000-year old archeological artifact.

The more "common" varieties can be had for not a serious premium over their gold value....around +/- $1000 or so.

It's interesting to compare these to modern coins and realize just how hard it is to make good looking images on coins.

It had been way better earlier, both on Roman and Greek coinage. Some of the Greek coins would put anything modern to shame. For some reason the quality of the coinage at the end of the roman empire (what we'd call the byzantine empire, even though they'd have just called themselves romans) took a major turn for the worse in terms of artistic quality.

The declining quality probably correlated with the military setbacks the Byzantines were dealt by the Arabs and later by the Turks. Heraclius finally defeated the Sassanid Persians in 622 but lost much of the Holy Land to the Arabs by 640. [1,2] The crushing defeat of the Byzantines at Manzikert in 1071 [3] led to a series of events that resulted in the Crusades.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclius#Byzantine_counter-of... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yarmuk [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Manzikert

It is interesting. The techniques for creating dies has changed a lot over the millennia -- all the way from hand-engraving (then) to laser-engraving (now).

I'm biased because I specialize in 18th/19th century US stuff, but I think those were the best-looking (overall - not necessarily just the designs themselves).

Dies were made by starting with an actual-sized engraved positive which was used to make the working dies (negatives), which were then polished to make the coins (positives). You get cool errors and varieties from slight differences in dies (that crack and break over time) and things like hand-punched dates (why re-engrave a whole new master when you can just take the main design with a blank date, create a die, and smack in the "1895" with a hammer? :)

I think the modern modern laser-engraved stuff has lost something...the coins of today are almost "too good" - they're kinda flat-looking & soft. shrug

How much of a concern are fakes? Or is it not worth the effort for the low price difference from the raw materials

Great question. Fakes are a huge concern when it comes to the rarer ones. For example, this guy:

https://coins.ha.com/itm/byzantine/ancient-coins/ancients-me...

Sold for $216,000 because it's both the nicest known and there are only 7 known from Emperor Mezezius.

So the incentive to fake is high, but because there are only 7 to compare it to, experts would be able to spot the attributes of a fake pretty easily (even the best fakes always have some tell-tale giveaways).

If you want to read a super cool story about a modern counterfeiter, Google around for the story of "Omega Man", a contemporary counterfeiter who created fakes of some early 1900s gold coins that were SO good that people actually seek out and collect the counterfeits today (he, like many con masters, couldn't resist an ego spike and left a calling card on his fakes...)

Also somewhat interesting is the design of Ottoman coins. Whereas the Byzantines imprinted religious figures and rulers on the coins, Ottoman coinage completely lacked human depictions (not even of Sultans) and was imprinted with Ottoman Turkish script. Very similar to how Christian frescoes were plastered over in the Hagia Sophia

> Ottoman coinage completely lacked human depictions

Quite likely due to Islamic aniconism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniconism_in_Islam

This was the influence of iconoclasm. Something championed in islam and even made brief inroads into Christianity.

https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

An interesting podcast about Byzantium that picks up where Mike Duncan's History of Rome left off

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