Nomos 15

CAMPANIA. Nola. Circa 400-385 BC. Nomos (Silver, 21 mm, 7.36 g, 11 h). Head of Athena to right, wearing crested Attic helmet adorned with a laurel wreath and an owl, with its head facing out, standing to right. Rev. ΝΩΛΑ[ΙΩΝ] Man-headed bull standing to right. Chronique Des Arts et De La Curioste, Supplement A la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Anne 1901, Paris, pp. 127 (this coin). HN III 603. Jameson 56 (this coin). Sambon, Les Monnaies Antiques de L’Italie, 807, pl. IV, 807 (this coin). SNG ANS 557 same dies. Voukelatos, Provenance Lost and Found: Alfred Bourguignon, Koinon I, pp 30-38 (this coin). A coin of lovely style, finely toned and with an attractively centered obverse. Reverse struck slightly off-center and with some flatness on the man-headed bull's head, otherwise, good very fine.

From the Stoecklin Collection, acquired from Bank Leu in the late 1950s or early 1960s, from the Jameson Collection, and from the collection of Professor L. White King, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 22 April 1909, 6 and from the Alfred Bourguignon (Deputy of the Netherlands Consulate in Naples) collection, Sambon & Canessa, Paris, 1901, 348, purchased by W. Talbot Ready for 245 Francs.

One of the interesting discoveries about the smaller Campanian mints of the early 4th century is that the workers who produced their coinages were apparently the same. We know this because a number of obverse dies were shared between the different mints. For example, the obverse of this coin was also used to strike coins for Hyria (as SNG ANS 255).