Since 1936, during the London Numismatic Congress, when András Alföldi presented his doctoral dissertation "A Festival of Isis in Rome under the Christian Emperors of the IVth Century" (published in 1937), there has been no significant progress in the study of these emissions. The only exceptions are: the brief catalog published by David Vagi (1999) within his book "Coinage and History of the Roman Empire", and the important study of The House of Constantine by Lars Ramskold (2016): "A die link study of Constantine’s pagan Festival of Isis tokens and affiliated coin-like ‘fractions’: chronology and relation to major imperial events".

Isis Faria (protectress of the island of Pharos, where the lighthouse of Alexandria was)

Although the theories of Alföldi are not currently fully accepted, his "Preliminary Catalogue" (as he titled it) has not yet been overcome, no one has attempted to complement it with the new tokens that have been appeared in these almost 80 years. With this "Visual Catalogue", by incorporating new "unpublished" pieces and ordering the tokens that Alföldi includes practically repeated, we have tried to update these interesting roman mintages.

Our new "Visual Catalog" of the VOTA PVBLICA coinage presents exactly 324 issues, with more than 600 images distributed in the 40 types of reverses that we have identified. (Alföldi listed 400 types of tokens, but many of them were simply variant styles and he arranged them by types of obverses rather than reverses).

In addition, this catalog also serves as an "Identification Guide". To search for a token in this visual catalogue, we recommend first identifying the type of reverse, accessing from the center of the home page to the page that shows the TYPES OF REVERSES.

Once our reverse has been identified, it will be enough to access the corresponding type and there, remembering that all the references are ordered by size (AE2, AE3, etc.), it will be easy for us to find the legend, the issuer and the correspondence with the catalogues of Älfoldi, Vagi, RIC, etc. As well as -almost certainly- see images of similar tokens.

The indices by obverses are also interesting, in them we can see each of the types that correspond to a certain anonymous obverse and also the reverses minted by a specific emperor.

Back in 2013, when having Alföldi's 1937 catalog was almost impossible, something reserved for a few, I got the idea of preparing an "online catalogue" of the Roman tokens issued during the 4th century for the Festivals of Isis. (Which has also turned out to be an identification guide).

Happy idea that would not have been possible without the drawings of my friend Javier. His interpretation of the obverses and, above all, the reverses, is simply exquisite. Once the reverse is discovered, we already have the "type" and the task of identification and/or cataloging is much easier. Sincere thanks, Javier.

I must also thank all my friends and colleagues in the world of numismatics, who during these last years have been sending me images and links of all the Isis Festival tokens they saw

Nine years later, already in 2023, I must express my special thanks to Lars Ramskold, one of the greatest specialists on the subject (if not the most), who has not only prepared a kind "Prologue" for me, but has also sent me valuable information and photographs for me very difficult to get. Thank you dear Lars.

 

VISUAL CATALOGUE
Isis Festivals Tokens (Rome, fourth century A.D.)
"Vota Publica" issues