Obolos 1

GAUL, uncertain tribe. Quarter stater (Gold, 10mm, 1.31 g 1), early 1st century BC (?). Bearded male head to left, wearing wreath with berries (laurel or olive). Rev. Horse kneeling to left, with prominent mane and with what may be a spear coming out of its back (or possibly stylized reins); above, ingot-like rectangular object. CCCBM -. DT -. Dembski -. LT -. S. -. Apparently unknown and unique. Many minor scratches and abrasions typical of a surface find, otherwise, good very fine.

From the Cologny Collection, supposedly found in the area northeast of Paris.

This extraordinary piece has long been in a collection where it was thought to be a coin of the Helvetii of the Ninno type (!), but no research had been done on it and it simply remained a puzzle. In fact, among the few things that we can be sure of is that it is not a coin of the Helvetii (!) and that it is genuine (the possibility that it might just be an unusually bizarre Merovingian issue can also be discarded). Its purported find spot seems to indicate that it probably is Celtic: the obverse shows an unusual male head wearing an elaborate wreath, while the reverse is quite enigmatic. While the coin was clearly struck from dies that are much larger than the flan (thus suggesting that they were prepared for a larger denomination that has also not survived) we can be certain that what is depicted is a horse with bent legs, apparently collapsing due to a spear thrust in its neck. Above the back is a rectangular object with stretched corners that looks surprisingly like a Late Bronze Age copper ingot, similar to those found in the Uluburun wreck (ore from Cyprus). This similarity is probably fortuitous. There are the remains of a further symbol above the animal’s neck but too little is preserved for us to know what it is. In any case, this is a particularly exciting piece and surely one of the highlights of this collection!