Summary of Corrected Attribution

The method used to obtain the corrected attributions is based on the change of dates caused by a monetary reform. The method determines the new date, different from the original date shown by the first striking of the coins, for both the countermarked coins and the other coins in the hoard.

In Part 5a, the Saqqâra hoard supplied the information necessary to assign the earliest possible date for the countermarking of coins C (i.e., the date of the monetary reform). Application of the standard method to determine a date of countermarking placed it after 180 BC. The Corinth hoard gave the basis for assigning the beginnings of the two-eagle coinage (types D and E) to near the time of Cleopatra I (180-176 BC). The Saqqâra hoard also indicated that coins of type E were produced before 170 BC. Thus coins C were assigned to 180-c.176 BC, coins D to c.176 BC and coins E to c.176-c.170 BC.

In Part 5b, the weight distribution of the hoard, with the general absence of coins heavier than c.45g, was used to show that the earlier coins (A and B) had also been subject to the monetary reform. Thus the gap in the hoard data (see Part 3) created by the absence of both coins of Ptolemy V and unmarked coins of Ptolemy IV was caused through selection by the reform and by the hoarder. The coins in the hoard that originated with Ptolemies II, III and IV were all validated by a reform that occurred in the time of Ptolemy VI after 180 BC.

The resulting attributions (see the table left) were obtained by a method that views the coins as they must have been viewed by the hoarder, i.e., from an after-the-reform perspective. The hoarder saved coins, predominately the largest coins, that were validated (A, B, C) or produced (D, E) by the reform.

Part 6 (a and b) gives a review of the method used in the previously published attribution. Part 7 compares the results of the two different methods.