Aphrodisias, Obols

Analyzed coins Die analysis Visual catalogue

Analyzed coins

Coin catalogue section: Aphrodisias
Coin corpus datasets: Aphrodisias, Obols

The number of analyzed coins recorded in the Corpus as of 2 June 2025 is presented in Table 1 (for the coin with corpus no. 1 it is impossible to decide whether it is variant 2a or 2b).

Type Count
2– 1
2a 1
2b 18
Total 20

Table 1: Number of analyzed coins

Die analysis

The identification of the dies is very problematic for these obols, both because of their state of preservation or the quality of the minting, and because of the low resolution of some of the photographs. For these reasons, the overview of the obverse dies in Table 2 below does not claim to be definitive. The reliability of the identification of the reverse dies is even lower, and therefore they are not included in Table 2 (only in some cases is the identity of the dies certain, e.g. for specimens 8 and 13 of variant 2b).

Type Corpus no. Specimen Obverse die
2– 1 1 O7
2a 2 1 O1
2b 3 1 O2
4 2 O3
5 3 O2
6 4 O2
7 5 O4
8 6 O3
9 7 O5
10 8 O2
11 9 O4
12 10 O2
13 11 O6
14 12 O4
15 13 O2
16 14 O2
17 15 O5
18 16 O4
19 17 O4
20 18 O4

Table 2: Overview of dies used for individual coins

Estimates of the so-called coverage of this data sample (the number of coins in the original population struck by dies in the sample divided by the total number of coins struck by all the dies) and of the original number of dies are given for completeness in Table 3.1 The coverage value of 0.850 is relatively high. The estimated number of original dies is approximately 12, while the observed number of dies is close to the lower end of the 95% confidence interval (7 vs 7.4). However, because the number of coins analyzed is small and, as mentioned above, the identification of the dies is not completely certain, these values need to be taken with great caution. The frequencies of dies, i.e. the numbers of dies observed a given number of times, are given in Figure 1.

number of analysed coins: 20
number of observed dies: 7
mean number of coins per observed die: 2.857
coverage and its 95% confidence interval: 0.850
0.594 – 1
original number of dies and its 95% confidence interval: 11.8
7.4 – 18.9

Table 3: Statistics and estimates

Die-frequencies

Figure 1: Die-frequencies

Visual catalogue

Photo credits can be found in Coin corpus, Aphrodisias, Obols (in the photographs of some coins the order of their sides was reversed in order to keep the same obverse–reverse convention).

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2–, Specimen 1 (Corpus no. 1). Obverse die O7.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2a, Specimen 1 (Corpus no. 2). Obverse die O1.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 1 (Corpus no. 3). Obverse die O2.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 2 (Corpus no. 4). Obverse die O3.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 3 (Corpus no. 5). Obverse die O2.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 4 (Corpus no. 6). Obverse die O2.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 5 (Corpus no. 7). Obverse die O4.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 6 (Corpus no. 8). Obverse die O3.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 7 (Corpus no. 9). Obverse die O5.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 8 (Corpus no. 10). Obverse die O2.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 9 (Corpus no. 11). Obverse die O4.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 10 (Corpus no. 12). Obverse die O2.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 11 (Corpus no. 13). Obverse die O6.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 12 (Corpus no. 14). Obverse die O4.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 13 (Corpus no. 15). Obverse die O2.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 14 (Corpus no. 16). Obverse die O2.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 15 (Corpus no. 17). Obverse die O5.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 16 (Corpus no. 18). Obverse die O4.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 17 (Corpus no. 19). Obverse die O4.

Holmoi, Obols

Type 2b, Specimen 18 (Corpus no. 20). Obverse die O4.

1 The estimates of the coverage and the original number of dies are calculated based on formulas (3) and (5) in Esty 2011, pp. 49–50. Their confidence intervals are calculated based on formulas (4) and (5) in Esty 2006, p. 360.

 

2 June 2025