Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Drachm Philip III Type
| Issuer | Uncertain Eastern European Celts |
|---|---|
| Year | 300 BC - 101 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Hammered |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Highly stylised figure of Zeus Aëtophoros enthroned to the left, holding a long sceptre in his left hand; the anatomy and throne are dissolved into a series of angular, schematic lines characteristic of late Celtic imitative coinage. A monogram or control symbol appears to the left of the figure in the field. The composition derives ultimately from the silver coinage of Philip III of Macedon but is so thoroughly transformed by Celtic artistic conventions as to render the prototype barely recognisable. The field is otherwise blank and without legend. |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Plain |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Philip III of Macedon — the half-brother of Alexander the Great who ruled briefly as nominal king from 323 to 317 BC before being murdered on Olympias's orders — provided the prototype that Celtic die-cutters across the Balkans and Carpathian basin spent the next two centuries progressively abstracting. The "Uncertain Eastern European" attribution reflects genuine scholarly disagreement: without a confirmed hoard findspot, pinning these pieces to a specific tribe or workshop remains impossible, and the two-century date range is an honest acknowledgment of that difficulty.
The progressive stylistic degeneration of Philip III-type drachms is itself a research tool — later strikes show increasingly schematic die work, with original figurative elements dissolving into punches and curves that bear only ancestral resemblance to the Macedonian original.