Coins from the sole reign of Caracalla from the Roman mint are listed in The Roman Imperial Coinage, volume IV, part I-II (gold and silver; bronze; memorial issues). In 2021 the coins from the provincial mints were not yet online (Roman Provincial Coinage database).
Caracalla's portrait on coins: 211, 212, 213, 215-217, 217, 217 AD.
Photos: Pangerl 2013, Abb. 3-4.In 214 AD (RIC IV, 245) Caracalla introduced a new silver coin, called by scholars the Antoninianus, but the ancient name is not known.
Antoninianus from 216 AD. On the reverse stands Sol, holding a globe
RIC IV, p. 253 nr. 281a. Photo: cngcoins.com.Particularly famous are three gold medallions from the so-called Aboukir hoard. They have depictions of Caracalla, stylistically dated to his reign as sole ruler. The history of the hoard feels like a detective novel written by Agatha Christie featuring Hercule Poirot. The only thing missing is a murdered archaeologist. The hoard was discovered in February or March 1902, and was said to have been found in the town of Aboukir (Abu Qir) in the Nile delta of Egypt. Nothing is known about the circumstances of the find. Even the place of discovery is not entirely certain. Minya in Upper Egypt, Karnak and Alexandria have also been mentioned.
The hoard consists of some 600 gold coins (most of them looking as if they had been produced the day before), 18 to 20 gold bars (perhaps found a bit earlier, in 1901), and 20 gold medallions. First the gold coins and bars were offered for sale in Paris and London, in Austria and Germany. Shady men from Syria and Armenia and a mysterious woman from the Orient, travelling by boat and train, showed the pieces to art dealers, curators of museums, and collectors. They asked enormous amounts of money, acted secretive, and were in haste. There was no hesitation in buying the gold coins. Sir John Evans for example says in 1902 that he had bought one of them, a rare aureus of Balbinus (Emperor in 238 AD), in Cairo. George Francis Hill, director of the British Museum, says in 1904 that the British Museum had acquired two gold bars.
Then the medallions emerged, but people were reluctant to buy them, afraid that they might not be genuine. In Paris four pieces were sold to the Armenian art dealer Mihran Sivadjian. The others went back to Egypt. Early July 1902 Sivadjian, on transit to Russia, offered his four pieces to Heinrich Dressel, director of the Münzkabinett in Berlin. Dressel believed they were genuine and bought them, with the support of some friends of the Berlin museums and Theodor Mommsen (these pieces he numbered A-D). The next year a fifth piece could be acquired (E).
From the very start, many archaeologists discussed the authenticity of the medallions. It was a bitter polemic in articles and letters. Reputations and much money were at stake. One archaeologist proposed to perform a section on one of the Berlin medallions, to prove that it was a forgery. Dressel's response was predictable. In 1906 Dressel published a lenghty article about the medallions. At the time all the other pieces were in Egypt: nrs. F and H owned by mrs. Sinadino in Alexandria, nrs. G, I and U by mrs. Vinga in Alexandria, nrs. K, M, N, O, P and S by mr. Eddé in Alexandria, nrs. L, R and T by art dealer Kyticas in Cairo (later Dikran Kelekian, Constantinople and Paris), nr. Q by mr. Nahman in Cairo, who sold it in 1902 to a dealer in Paris (there is no nr. J).
Dressel's article led to the further sale of the other pieces. Of the remaining 15 pieces, three are now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (ex dealers Kyticas and Kelekian; bought by Henry Walters before 1931), one in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, Greece (ex collection Nahman; bought by prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis at an auction in 1962), and 11 in the Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon. The latter were acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian, a British-Armenian businessman and philanthropist, in 1949 (ex collections Eddé, Sinadino, Vinga; eight from the John Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, three from the collection of James Loeb through the dealer Jacob Hirsch). Gulbenkian's delightful museum in the outskirts of Lisbon is, by the way, a must-see when you happen to be there!
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.
Photo: Wikimedia, Shadowgate.The vast majority of the 600 gold coins was from the reigns of Diocletianus (284-305 AD) and Maximianus Herculius (286-305 AD). The others (a total of 39) were issued durings the reigns of Alexander Severus (222-235 AD; 10), Balbinus (1), Gordianus III (8), Philippus (1), Numerianus (1), Carinus (5), Julianus of Pannonia (1), and Constantius I Chlorus (293-306 AD; 12). Eddé had bought about 300 coins, the others were acquired by other collectors, merchants, and museums, for example Sir John Evans (Balbinus and Numerianus), the Münzkabinett (the only silver coin, a quinarius of Carinus; an aureus of Diocletianus and Maximianus), Mihran Sivadjian (Julianus of Pannonia), and Carl Adolf Ludwig Bachofen von Echt (aureus of Carinus). Eddé distinguishes two "Roman medallions" from the coins: Carinus (VIRTVS AVGVSTOR), and Diocletianus and Maximianus Herculius (with an elephant quadriga).
One of the two aurei of Balbinus (the same type) listed in Roman Imperial Coinage.
On the reverse a standing Victoria with wreath and palm branch.
This is not the Aboukir coin, for which see Evans 1902, Pl. XIX,3.
Auctioned for 90.000 Swiss Francs in 2005. Photo: wildwinds.com.Only three gold bars could be rescued, the others were melted down. Two were bought by the British Museum, through mr. Hilton Price.
- The first has a stamp with the text BENIGNVS COXIT. For coquere meaning melting see Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, XXXIII,19,60.
- The second has the stamp A(ulus?) C(aecilius?) VE(stinus?) P(rae)P(ositus) SIG(navit) [p]ROBAVIT (with above, overstamping of [---]ANTIUS[---] or [---]AVTIVS[---]), and EPMOY ERMV, Greek and Latin for the name Hermes or the city Hermopolis.
- The third bar, in the Pierpont Morgan collection in New York, has the stamp [Antiu?]S [PR]OBAVIT.
The bars that were melted down were seen by Eddé for a few minutes only. He noted various stamped texts, a human leg resembling those of the trinacria of Sicily, and an eagle or sparrowhawk. Giannino Dattari in Cairo, in a letter to Dressel dated 9 April 1902, speaks of a camel, an eagle, and fishes.
Gold bars with the stamps BENIGNV SCOXIT, ACVEPPSIG, and EPMOY ERMV.
British Museum, London. L. 18.7 and 18.3 cm. Photos: British Museum.Many of the 20 medallions have depictions of Alexander the Great. We also find his mother Olympias, Athena, Apollo, Nereids, Nike, and Perseus rescuing Andromeda.
Depiction of Caracalla holding a lance and a shield with Victory in a chariot.
Depiction of Alexander the Great hunting a boar, with the text BACIΛEVC AΛEXANΔPOC.
Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Diam. 5,7 cm. Photos: Walters Art Gallery.
Depiction of Caracalla holding a lance and a shield with Alexander on horseback and a lion.
Depiction of the seated Alexander the Great, with the text BACIΛEVC AΛEXANΔPOC.
Opposite Alexander is Nike holding a shield with Achilles and Penthesilea.
Münzkabinett, Berlin. Diam. 4,8 cm. Photo: Münzkabinett.
Depiction of Caracalla holding a lance and a shield with Alexander on horseback and a lion.
Depiction of a Nereid riding on a sea-centaur holding a trident and a fish.
Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. Diam. 5,8 cm. Photo: Museu Calouste Gulbenkian.Technical analysis has shown that the medallions come from a single workshop. Analyis of the dies seems to point to an emission from one short period. Stylistic parallels belong to the period from Caracalla's sole reign to the middle of the third century. There are two obvious periods of production for the medallions, because in the first half of the third century two Emperors identified themselves emphatically with Alexander the Great: Caracalla and Alexander Severus. The three portraits of Caracalla speak in his favour (there are no portraits of Alexander Severus or other Emperors). As Herodianus wrote: "Caracalla, after attending to matters in the garrison camps along the Danube River, went down into Thrace at the Macedonian border, and immediately he became Alexander the Great. To revive the memory of the Macedonian in every possible way, he ordered statues and paintings of his hero to be put on public display in all cities. He filled the Capitol, the rest of the temples, indeed, all Rome, with statues and paintings designed to suggest that he was a second Alexander".
Many scholars have suggested that the medallions were prizes (so-called niketeria) for victorious competitors who participated in athletic and other contests, perhaps in the Macedonian city of Beroia: there are very strong parallels on bronze coins from Macedonia, belonging to the period 218-244 AD. Karsten Dahmen has drawn attention to some late Roman contorniates (bronze medallions with characteristically shaped rims, with a furrow, from which their modern Italian name 'contorniati' originates), that have been interpreted as New Year presents. These have similar representations of Alexander the Great. Dahmen suggests that the medallions were handed out to high-ranking officials as gifts for the New Year, during contests in Beroia.
The hoard of Aboukir may well date from 296-297 AD, when Egypt and Armenia were torn by armed conflict. Quite problematic remains the way in which the hoard of Aboukir was compiled. How could a single person or office collect all these similar medallions, if they had been given to many different people, so that inevitably they would soon be scattered over many places? That problem is not solved by quoting the title of a James Bond movie, as was done by Cornelius Vermeule, supported by Dahmen: "only an earlier day 'Goldfinger' would have assembled so many medallions, aurei, small Niketeria, and bars at Aboukir near Alexandria in Egypt". Perhaps the medaillions had not yet been handed out when Caracalla was assassinated, and then became part of a gold reserve.
A smaller but similar hoard has been found in Tarsus, Turkey in 1863. It was made up of three gold medallions with representations of Alexander the Great, very similar to the Aboukir medallions, a commemorative coin or medallion of Severus Alexander, and 23 aurei (now in the Cabinet des Médailles of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).
