Ancient Roman Coin Found
Around 40 years ago, I was living in a small town near Savannah, and the EPA required all of us to hook up to the county sewer system, because we lived so close to the Intracoastal Waterway and our septic tanks were polluting the waterways.
We hired a plumber to dig the trench for hooking our house up to the sewer system. The plumber was a friend of our family and I was having a chat with him as he dug deeper and deeper into the sandy soil. He threw a shovel full of dirt up on the side and I looked down to see something shiny.
I picked it up and it looked like a coin from maybe a child’s game. Neither of us knew what it was. I just thought it was pretty and put it in my jewelry box.
In 2007, I was searching the internet and found that you could look at coins and coin collections. In the search box, I described the little coin I had found. The next screen that came up almost knocked me out of my chair. There was a picture of a coin exactly like mine.
The coin was a part of the Ottilia Buerger Collection of Ancient Coins at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. To read about the coin in total, go to the website, lawrence,edu and search for the Buerger coin collection, it is coin # 62. Also, there is another exact coin to mine in the American Numismatic Society Collection in New York City, see # 1937.158.440.
The coin is a silver denarius minted between 29-27 B.C. and commemorates the naval victory of Octavian, also known as Caesar Augustus, grand nephew of Julius Caesar, against Octavian’s rivals, Marc Antony and Cleopatra of Egypt. As history tells us, when Cleopatra saw that Marc Antony was being defeated in this battle, she ordered her ships to take her to Egypt.
Antony soon followed her. Both ended their lives in suicide.
On one side of the coin, you see Victoria standing on the prow of a ship, holding a wreath in her right hand and a palm in the other.
On the obverse, you see Octavian, Caesar Augustus, riding in a chariot, holding an olive branch in one hand and the reigns of four horses in the other. Below is IMP.CAESAR standing for Imperator Caesar. He was declared the first emperor of the Roman Empire.
How did the coin get from the Roman Empire into the dirt outside Savannah, Georgia? The only logical explanation that I have received over the years, it was stuck between some ballast used by ships to hold them down in the water when they were empty. When the ships arrived in ports to load cargo, the ballast was dumped beside the port. Such is the story in Savannah.
For hundreds of years, ships have sailed into her port empty throwing the stones out and replacing them with exported items from the United States. Savannah used the ballast for road beds and other building projects.
The area where the coin was found was indeed beside an old road bed. Possibly through years of movement, the coin was dislodged from the ballast and deposited into the soil where it rested until it was dug up in the 1970s.
On or about September 2, 31 B.C., the naval Battle of Actium between the two rivals, Octavian and Marc Antony took place.
In remembrance of this date, I returned to my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee to gift the coin to the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology so that it can be seen by the public. As always having an interest in Egyptology and being a native of a town named after Memphis, Egypt, I thought the University of Memphis would be the most fitting place for the coin to reside.
Is the coin valuable? It is truly a very rare coin and its condition is excellent considering where it was found and the age. In the past I have tried in vain to have it valued and authenticated. To me, the value and the story is priceless!
You never know what is under your feet.
