Zodiac drachm with Kronos (Saturn) in Capricorn struck in Alexandria in the 8th year of Antoninus Pius, 144–145 AD. This period is remembered as a time of uninterrupted peace and stability within the Pax Romana. Coins may celebrate the publication of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos (astrology manual) in the city in that year. Currently 1600 CHF.
The finest known Zodiac wheel type $43,200 in 2011.
The Zodiac Drachm is highly sought after. Struck to celebrate the Great Sothic Cycle, the coins feature 16 variations pairing the 12 zodiac signs with Greco-Roman deities and planetary symbols. The Great Sothic Cycle refers to the flooding of the Nile River and the beginning of a new eon, marked by the appearance of the phoenix, a mythological bird which was reborn every 500 to 1000 years out of its own ashes. The ultimate project for collectors, coins often feature zodiac constellations alongside portraits of deities, like a centaur drawing a bow (Jupiter in Sagittarius) or the Dioscuri twins (Gemini).
Caracalla, (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) was Roman emperor from 198 to 217 AD. He was a member of the Severan dynasty, the eldest son of Septimius Severus and Julia Domna. Co-ruler with his father from 198, he continued to rule with his brother Geta after their father's death in 211. He had his brother killed later that year.
Ancient sources portray Caracalla as a tyrant and cruel leader.
Caracalla became known for the construction of the Baths of Caracalla, and for the massacres he ordered against the people of Rome and elsewhere in the empire. In 216, Caracalla began a war against the Parthian Empire. He didn't see the campaign through due to his assassination by a soldier in 217. Caracalla was fatally stabbed from behind during a sanitary stop by a centurion named Julius Martialis on April 8, 217 AD. The assassin was chased down and killed by bodyguards. The assassination was orchestrated by Caracalla's Praetorian Prefect, Macrinus. Macrinus succeeded him as emperor three days later.
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The bad sequel of 'Gladiator' in 2024 featured Caracalla, Geta, and Macrinus. Little of the film reflects history.
Caracalla and Geta were Roman brothers who became joint emperors upon the death of their father Septimius Severus in 211 AD.
A caracallus was a hooded cloak worn by the Celts of Gaul where Septimius Bassianus was born on April 4, 186 CE. Young Caracalla grew up among them and adapted some of their customs. (such as wearing a caracallus) His father, the future emperor Septimius Severus, served as the Imperial governor. Younger brother Geta was born May 27, 189, at Mediolanum (now Milan). The two boys hated one another. In 193, Septimius Severus was the victor in a complex civil war. On the reverse of a rare gold aureus issued about the year 200, the two boys face one another, with the inscription “Eternity of the Empire.”
In December 195, after his father defeated the usurper Pescennius Niger, Caracalla, aged nine, was given the rank of Caesar, designating him an imperial successor. Publius Septimius Geta was given the rank of Caesar at the age of nine. At the age of 10, Caracalla was raised to the rank of Augustus. (effectively co-emperor) Geta was not promoted to Augustus until 209. Severus died February 4, 211. The palace was soon divided into two hostile armed camps. In December 211, Caracalla invited Geta to a meeting on neutral ground – their mother’s palace apartment. Caracalla’s guards stabbed Geta to death.
Caracalla issued a damnatio memoriae and erased Geta’s name and image from Imperial inscriptions and works. His followers were slaughtered.
Geta appears on a superb aureus struck in 201.
Romans were great fans of chariot races held in the Circus Maximus. A hugely desirable brass sestertius of Caracalla dated to 213 depicts the Circus Maximus in rich detail.
Strapped for cash, Caracalla turned to the easiest route to replentishing the treasury, debasing currency. His antoninianus was officially valued at two denarii but initially contained silver worth only about one-and-a-half. By collecting taxes in denarii and making payments in antoniniani, the Imperial treasury realized a profit. Ruinous inflation raged for the rest of the century. The antonianus was eventually reduced to trace amounts of silver.
Coins of Caracalla’s last years show an increasingly thick neck and heavy beard. Inscriptions hail his victories over Britons and Germans.
Born about 164 of Berber ancestry in North Africa, Macrinus rose to the high rank of Praetorian Prefect under Caracalla. Macrinus seized the throne after arranging the murder of Caracalla. He died April 8, 217 AD aged 29. Macrinus was captured and executed after a reign of about 14 months.
Despite this brief reign, his coin output was prolific. Born about 208, Marcus Opellius Diadumenianus was the son of Macrinus from an uncertain mother.
Caracalla’s aunt, Julia Maesa, bribed the eastern legions to proclaim her 14-year-old grandson Elagabalus as emperor, using the rumor that the boy was actually Caracalla’s son. After Macrinus was killed, Diadumenian fled but was intercepted and beheaded. He was 10 years old. Diadumenian’s head was sent as a trophy to Elagabalus.
During the Cold War era, US spy satellites snapped images of the Soviet Union, China and their allies. When these images were declassified in the 1990s, photos of a rocky terrace in Iraqi Kurdistan caught the attention of archaeologists, who believed they saw the remnants of a large, square fort. Qalatga Darband is located at a strategic point on the Darband-i-Rania pass, which once linked Mesopotamia to Iran. Archaeologists think the city was built on a route that Alexander of Macedon took in 331 BC while pursuing Persian King Darius III; who was fleeing from his defeat at the Battle of Gaugamela.
Drone images of Qalatga Darband were processed to enhance color differences in 2022. The city, nearby Lake Dukan, was encircled by a wall and had a fort, a temple, and wine presses.
The Parthians were a major power, conquering vast swaths of territory.
Qalatga Darband appears to have been occupied during the early Parthian period, which spanned from the first century B.C. to the first century A.D. A coin discovered at the site depicts the Parthian king Orodes II, who ruled between 57 B.C. and 37 B.C.
The location of Cleopatra and Mark Antony's tomb is one of archaeology's unsolved mysteries. Taposiris Magna, an ancient temple complex 30 miles west of Alexandria, has been studied.
Researchers discovered a 4,300-foot underground tunnel, a large sunken ancient port off the coast, and hundreds of coins bearing Cleopatra's image.
The most widely accepted theory places the tomb of the pair somewhere in Alexandria, likely submerged due to a massive earthquake and tsunami in 365 AD.
The remains of a temple of Osiris, Taposiris Magna, has been in the spotlight as the site of the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony.
Cleopatra VII was born in 70 or 69 B.C. and ruled Egypt as co-regent for almost 30 years. After the forces of Cleopatra and Anthony were defeated by Octavian, she committed suicide in 30 B.C.
Cleopatra VII was the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt. She was part of a dynasty of Macedonian rulers founded by Ptolemy, who served as general under Alexander the Great during his conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C. In 2010 archaeologists discovered a huge headless granite statue of a Ptolemaic king, and the original gate to a temple dedicated to the god Osiris. It could represent Ptolemy IV.
A gold coin of an obscure, ill-fated Roman usurper led the way in elite auctions by Numismatica Ars Classica in late May. Graded Ch AU★, 5/5 Strike and 4/5 surface, it raced past its pre-auction estimate and made $1.63 million. Lucius Domitius Domitianus launched his rebellion from Egypt in 297 AD, seizing control of Alexandria and the Nile Delta. Capitalizing on local grievances against Diocletian's high taxes, he declared himself Augustus and minted his own coins.
Its believed to be one of three aurei in private hands.
"One of the great ironies of Roman coinage is that some of the most valuable coins are of emperors who most people have never heard of,"
The revolt of Domitius Domitianus in Egypt interrupted the grain supply to Rome and opened the possibility of Persian (Sasanian) invasion. For about 8 months Domitianus controlled Alexandria and its mint, striking aurei and folles, as well as a series of pre-reform imperial Greek denominations. Diocletian personally led an expedition to Egypt to quell the rebellion. Diocletian retook most of the lost territory by December 297, which is when Domitianus died.
The rebellion was briefly sustained by Domitianus' corrector (designated successor), Aurelius Achilleus. Diocletian laid siege to Alexandria, ultimately recapturing the city and brutally crushed the final resistance in March 298.
Diocletian was Roman emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. Diocletian was unique in Roman imperial history for choosing retirement. He would die in 313 CE as a farmer growing cabbages.
Nico Calman, 19, had a good internship in 2019. He unearthed a 2,000-year-old silver dagger that helped the Romans wage war against a Germanic tribe in the first century A.D.
Discovered in its sheath in the grave of a soldier at Haltern am See (Haltern at the Lake), the weapon needed nine months of meticulous work to reveal a spectacularly ornamented 13-inch-long blade and sheath that once hung from a leather belt.
Dating to the Augustan period from 37 B.C. to 14 A.D., the blade had a front row seat to some of the most humiliating defeats in Roman history. At that time, Haltern, which sat on the fringes of the vast Roman empire, housed a military base for soldiers.
Up to 20,000 Roman soldiers were slaughtered when Germanic tribes swept through the region in 9 A.D. Though thousands of Roman soldiers were stationed in Haltern over almost 15 years or more, there are very few finds of weapons, attesting to their great value.
Up to 5,000 soldiers from the XIX Legion were stationed at Haltern am See to secure the region, with the camp serving as a pivotal, heavily fortified outpost before its abandonment following the Varus disaster. The entire XIX legion was wiped out.
Murum aries attigit is Latin for 'the ram has touched the wall.' It refers to a strict Roman military ultimatum: once a battering ram made contact with a city's fortifications, the offer of surrender and mercy was revoked, and the city would be sacked.
The ram touching the wall referred to the battering ram in an assault. The Roman battering ram (or aries) was a massive siege engine used to breach fortress walls and gates. It featured a heavy timber beam with a reinforced metal tip, suspended on ropes inside a mobile wooden shelter called a testudo ("tortoise")
Romans held that once an assault had begun, no mercy or quarter would be given.
When a city resisted a Roman siege and was breached, standard protocol was complete devastation. Soldiers were frequently ordered to kill every living thing they encountered until the commander gave the signal to stop, at which point the survivors were enslaved as war booty.
The term "missio" refers to the sign that a gladiator may give when they cede a fight to their opponent. It serves as both an acknowledgement of defeat and a plea for mercy.
The loser asks the munerarius to stop the fight and send him alive (missus) from the arena. If he had not fallen he could be "sent away standing" (stans missus). The editor took the crowd's response into consideration in deciding whether to let the loser live. "Without missio" was a fight with no possibility of a reprieve for the loser.
A gold aureus of Diadumenianus (or Diadumenian). He was son and co-emperor of Macrinus who ruled from April 217 to June 218. Macrinus came to power by murdering his predecessor, the demented Caracalla. He then made Diadumenianus, his 9 year-old son, co-emperor. Defeated in battle, both were hunted down and executed by rebel troops. In 1973 an aureus sold for $65,825 USD. In 2018 a comparable example made $336k.
Julius Saturninus was the Roman governor of Syria. He was forced by his troops and an unruly mob to proclaim himself as emperor in the year 280. After a few months, he was killed by his own troops. Only two coins are known. One resides in the French national collection, the other sold by Sotheby’s in 1972 for $61,500. It appeared again at auction in 1991 and brought $180k.
Jewish War Year 5 Silver Shekel. Judea rose in revolt in the year 66. The war dragged on for five bloody and bitter years. Around 25 genuine examples of the Year 5 shekel are known. One appeared at auction in 2020 and brought $300k.
Marius aureus. In 269 CE, a blacksmith who had risen through the ranks of the Roman army on the Rhine was proclaimed emperor by his troops under the name “Marcus Aurelius Marius”. He reigned for a few months before he was executed, according to legend with a sword that he had forged. Only 9 gold aurei of Marius exist. The sole undamaged coin in private hands sold for $59,305 in 1972. When it came to market again in 2003, it made $138,598.
Analysis of a dagger found in Tutankhamun's sarcophagus found the blade is made of iron from a meteorite. The dagger has a finely embossed gold handle with a crystal pommel. It was encased within a golden sheath. The blade contains high levels of nickel, along with traces of cobalt and phosphorus. Researchers were able to match the chemical composition to a meteorite which was found in 2000 on the Maras Matruh plateau in Egypt, 150 miles west of Alexandria.
Hieroglyphic term for iron, it translates as “iron from the sky”. The high quality of Tutankhamun's dagger suggests a mastery of iron working in his time.
Ancient Egyptian royal archives from 1,400BC mention royal gifts of iron in the period immediately before Tutankhamun's reign. Tushratta, King of Mitanni – a kingdom in northern Syria and Anatolia – sent iron objects to Amenhotep III, the grandfather of Tutankhamun.
The 13 inch long (34.2cm) dagger was found lying beside the right thigh of King Tutankhamun's mummy. It was likely handed down from his father. Ancient Egyptians believed iron from meteorites had magical powers that could usher souls into the afterlife. To the ancient Egyptians, meteorites were gifts from the gods. They considered the sky divine, so anything that fell from it would have been seen as a gift from the gods – if not a physical piece of one. They believed that the gods had bones made of iron. (and flesh of gold, skin of silver and hair of lapis lazuli)
Kamil crater in southern Egypt
There is no evidence of iron smelting in the region until nearly 1000 years later, so there is no question where the metal came from.
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The remains of a temple of Osiris, Taposiris Magna, has been in the spotlight as the site of the tomb of Cleopatra and Mark Antony. 
Tutankhamun’s daggers