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Nummus - Thrasamund Carthage mint, staurogram

Issuer Vandal Kingdom
Year 496-523
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Value 1 Nummus = 1/10 Denarius (0.1)
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Obverse description Diademed and draped bust of the Vandal king Thrasamund facing right, rendered in a late antique provincial style. The portrait features a beaded or pearl diadem encircling the head, with simplified facial features characteristic of Vandal coinage of the early sixth century. The neck and shoulder are indicated by a schematic drapery line. No inscription or legend surrounds the bust. The die work is crude but consistent with contemporary Carthaginian hammered bronze production.
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Edge Plain
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Thrasamund ruled the Vandal Kingdom for nearly three decades, maintaining an unusually sophisticated diplomatic posture toward Constantinople — exchanging embassies, arranging dynastic marriages, and carefully avoiding the outright theological confrontations that had plagued his predecessors. His mint at Carthage continued producing small bronze nummi that functioned within a monetary system still partly calibrated to late Roman norms, despite the kingdom's political independence.

The staurogram on this issue — a pre-Christian monogram of Christ predating the more familiar chi-rho — had deep roots in North African ecclesiastical usage and appears here likely as a continuity marker rather than a confessional statement, given that the Vandal ruling class remained staunchly Arian throughout Thrasamund's reign.

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