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Dumnocoveros of the Corieltavi
(or Parisii or Brigantes,
depending on where you think he
was from) has one of the
grandest names of iron age
Britain. It means something like
'giant of the world'. Certainly
this gold stater of his is a big
beauty and displays his big name
in a big way, with all the
letters visible. Rainer Kretz
says: "This
is a fine specimen from my own
collection. The coin’s condition
is ‘as struck’ despite the less
than perfect obverse which, as
is so often the case with this
type, is the result of a worn
die. By way of contrast, the
artistically more important
reverse containing the entire
legend is one of the finest on
record. To the average
collector, this slight
imperfection is not necessarily
a disadvantage because it at
least makes the coin affordable!
The coin was struck towards the
end of the Corieltauvian series
and forms part of three distinct
and closely related coinages,
all of which carry the name
Volisios on the obverse, while
the reverses feature a variety
of other names. Volisios is
thought to be a patronymic, with
the secondary names representing
his three sons. Of these
Dumnocoveros was most probably
the earliest. Volisios staters
show a heavy concentration of
findspots around the Humber
estuary, but it is unclear at
this stage whether the coins
were produced north or south of
the river. It is conceivable
that some may have been struck
by the Parisii north of the
Humber." A gold
stater to look forward to in
Chris Rudd's May list.
19.4.10 |
