jahrbuch numismatik geldgeschichte - Medievalcoinage.com

DEREK F. ALLEN
(London)
More on the Prague Type
(Plate 4)
Hans-Jörg Kellner's paper on the Celtic Silver Coins of the Prague
Typet has given us for the first time a basic study of this important
coinage. He has demonstrated most clearly the two geographical areas
in which the coinage is found, Thuringia and parts of Bohemia, and
he has shown its association with the oppida of the two regions.
In his discussion of the date and associations of the coinage Kellner's
views are, perhaps, more open to argument. In particular, he
seems to me to have overlooked evidence for the origin of the type,
which exists scattered through the museums of northern Europe and
no doubt also in other museums which I have not been able to visit.
The head on the obverse of the Prague type, which is conventional
and unintelligible, can be traced back through earlier versions of the
type to a normal wreathed head of Apollo to the left. It is not derived
from the helmeted head of Roma on the Roman denarius. The feature
of the Prague type pattern which Kellner has taken as the visor
of the helmet is a conflation of the forelock, the nose and the cheek of
the original Apollo head.
I have brought together on Plate 4 the coins which establish
what I have said above. Nos. 8 to 13 are typical examples of the Prague
type from Paris, Brussels and the Hague — there are none in British
collections. Unfortunately the find-spots of none of them are recorded,
but, though none comes from the same dies, they can be all
be matched on Kellner's Plate 12. Nos 1 to 7 illustrate the development
of the type from a recognisable classical head, through various stages
of increasing barbarism, until the elements of the Prague type pattern
became fixed. The horse on the reverse suffered less change, but the
continuity with the Prague type is obvious.
No. 1 (B. N. Paris 10 055) most clearly demonstrates the Apollo head,
with a wreath and the remains of flowing hair. No. 2 (B. N. Paris 9410)
is akin. No. 3 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) marks the transition to
no. 4 (B. N. Paris 9411), which is substantially the same as no. 5 (the
Hague Cabinet). Up to this point the obverse has been recognisably a
head, but on nos. 6 and 7 (B. N. Paris 9412 and 9414) the identical elements,
or most of them, have been reduced to a pattern containing in
embryo all the main features of the Prague type.
1 Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 15, 1965, 195-207.