ASIA MINOR. Uncertain. 2nd-3rd centuries. Tessera (Lead, 17 mm, 2.35 g), Claudius Attalus. ΚΛΑ - ATTAΛ Aulos player standing to right, with the head of a dog and a tail. Rev. Blank. Gülbay & Kireç 133. Munzzentrum Rheinland 124, 364. An interesting tessera signed by a known Ephesian aristocrat. Good very fine.


The two well-preserved tesserae offered in this sale (lots 3170-3171) allow for the reading of the legend of this tessera type as the personal name Claudius Attalus. As recent scholarship shows, some of the magistrates who signed their names on tesserae from Asia Minor can actually be traced in inscriptions from Ephesos (C. Kuhn: Prosopographical notes on four lead tesserae from Roman Ephesos, in: ZPE 190 [2014], pp. 137-140. Vossen collection 66). Considering this, the person whose name appears on our tessera may be identified as Tiberius Claudius Attalus Melior, who is also known from Ephesian epigraphic evidence. His name appears in two inscriptions from the beginning of the third century. One inscription (I. Ephesos 2944) calls him a high priest, likely of the imperial cult. In another inscription, belonging to a group of imperial statues, he is called prytanes, grammateus of the demos and asiarch.