Greek, Roman, Egyptian & Other Antiquities

Only a very few coin dies have survived from antiquity so there was great interest in the Hellenistic examples offered by Apollo Art Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) on June 8.

A Roman marble bust of the tyrannical Emperor Commodus attracted a flurry of bids at Mallams (25% buyer’s premium) in Oxford.

A Roman marble portrait bust of an Antonine prince emerged Sworders’ (25% buyer’s premium) sale in Stansted Mountfitchet.

Swiss coin auction house Numismatic Genevensis has sold a rare Roman gold coin featuring the portrait of Marcus Junius Brutus for SFr1.5m (£1.34m).

On the market for the first time in over half a century, a Roman marble copy of the Crouching Venus hammered at $130,000 (£103,000) in the Freeman’s Hindman (27/21/15% buyer’s premium) auction on May 23.

Found by a mudlark along the Thames in the early 2000s, these three well-preserved 1st-2nd century leather shoes would have once protected the feet of Roman children in Londinium.

A highlight of Apollo Art Auctions’ (20% buyer’s premium) April 27-28 sale was a trio of Egyptian sandstone reliefs from the Amarna period, the 17-year reign of the radical pharaoh Amenhotep IV known as Akhenaten.

“It had”, said the metal detectorist who found it, “been a wonderful Christmas present.”

One of the great masterpieces of ancient Greek numismatic art, this silver tetradrachm was struck in c.460BC in commemoration of the refounding of the city of Naxos. Its citizens had been exiled to Leontinoi by the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse.

Mithradates IV was ruler of the Hellenistic kingdom of Pontus in northern Anatolia from 169-150BC. He ushered in a period of relative friendship with the Roman republic that would continue until his grandson Mithradates VI (the Great) became its most formidable and determined opponent. Mithradates IV’s coinage draws attention to his Persian and Greek origins.

Spink posted a house record for a classical coin when it sold this Julius Caesar and Octavian gold aureus on April 3 for £220,000 plus 20% buyer’s premium against an estimate of £60,000-100,000.