The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

148 E. S. G. ROBINSON.
the middle of the sceptre ; yet between the striking
of the two coins a magistrate's name and a symbol
have been added.
Of No. 67 one cannot make out the underwritten
inscription, though its traces are provokingly plain :
it begins with an A, A, or N, and finishes after three
or four letters, as Miiller 95 has noted, with a P.
Further than this we cannot go.
No. 68 a, formerly in the collection of Dr. Imhoof-
Blumer, and published first by Bompois 9G and later
by Miiller, 97 is a great puzzle. The I, A, are thick and
indistinct. Bompois regarded it as reading either
from a nominative IA3IHN, or simply as
into which an I had crept by the mistake
of the engraver. Miiller, on the other hand, seeing
an upright stroke above the left lower whorl of the
silphium mistook for an iota what is in reality a flaw,
and read the whole as IASIONIO5 from IA3IONI5
on the analogy of other Cyrenaic names. Dr. Regling,
who very kindly made a close examination of the
coin for me, writes as follows: "The coin has been
double- struck with such force as to alter all the
A I
shapes. Originally the inscription was probably O
O
.
V\
One can see that the present A arises out of I, and the
3, N and O out of other letters ; during this alteration
the little accidental I beside the middle O may have
been added, or it may have been left as the remnant
the small letters
of the $ that previously stood there ;
2 belong to a later engraving of the die/'
95
i, p. 69.
96
97
Bompois, op. cit., pp. 119, 120.
M., Suppl., No. 52 A.