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sata but at some place less accessible to Dura than Antioch. But it is
not possible to assign them to a date later than the first emission of
Antioch. The dated gold piece,19 whether or
not it inaugurated the coinage of that mint, was probably struck in
January 255, and to put all the first emission of Antioch before that
date and then leave a gap until the middle of 256 is quite
unreasonable. It follows that the coins of the second mint were not
later but less common in Dura than those of Antioch. There is no
difficulty in supposing that a soldier might have coins struck in
Emisa, as he had one struck in Rome, though the general supply of the
town came from Antioch.
The case of Hoard XVII, which was not published when Alföldi wrote, is peculiar. It was found by the Comte du Mesnil, and the envelope in which it was contained was labelled "L 7 tombeau." Now L 7 is a block lying along the city wall, and there are no tombs there, so that the notation was at first dismissed as a mere error. But Dr. Toll tells me that in L 7 were found some hasty burials undoubtedly of soldiers killed in the defense of the town, and it is highly probable that the word "tombeau" means that these coins were associated with one of those burials. More specific information is unfortunately impossible now, but two considerations strongly support this theory. First the condition of the coins themselves, very badly corroded and showing no sign of a container, suggest that they had lain loose in the ground and had never been intentionally buried like the other hoards under the wall. Second, and more important, is the parallel between this hoard and the money found with the corpses in the mine. In both cases, the bulk of the coins are from Emisa, rare elsewhere in the city, and in both cases there are coins from the mint of Rome not otherwise found at Dura. We have to do, then, not with the date of the embankment but of that of the city's capture. of course, the most important feature of this hoard is the inclusion of our only two specimens from the second emission of Antioch. This emission must begin in 256, and Alföldi would like to put it early in that year. To this I have no objection, but I do not think it can be pushed back to 255. These pieces, together with those from Emisa, suggest that the soldiers who carried them were members of a last-minute reinforcement sent to the city and the entire absence of other coins of the second emission indicates that after the arrival of that body of men Dura was cut off from Antioch. How long after this it was actually captured depends on calculations in which the coins are of no service.
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A. R. BELLINGER.
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Created by the Digital
Documentation Center at AUB
in collaboration with Al
Mashriq of Høgskolen i
Østfold, Norway. 9902 - Email: hseeden@aub.edu.lb |