Cantiaci Sego c. AD 5-15 Sego Tascio Tablet *Excessively Rare*

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Cantiaci Sego c. AD 5-15 Sego Tascio Tablet Excessively Rare

Name: Cantiaci Sego c. AD 5-15 Sego Tascio Tablet *Excessively Rare*
SKU: IAC227
Price: 4950.00 GBP
Availability: InStock

£4,950.00

Code: IAC227

Cantiaci

Sego c. AD 5-15 Sego Tascio Tablet

Excessively rare, 7 known.

ABC 444, 12mm, 1.19g

Central strike on both sides showing full design, minor metal flaws.

Obverse

TASCIO inscription in central panel. Wheel and two pellets above and below.

Reverse

Horse left. Ring holding pellets above. Pellet ring below.

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Comments

Evans: XX.10 (1890, p. 541, pl. XX).

Van Arsdell Classification: Trinovantian P, Uncertain Dynastic Issues, The “Interregnum”, Coins Inscribed SEGO. The reverse is uninscribed, but stylistically the coin is the quarter stater corresponding to ABC 441 / VA 1845-01.

Sills DK 94 (3 obverse, 3 reverse dies): Coinage of Kent, The North Thames Dynasty in Kent; Type: Tasciovanus/Sego; Quarter Staters: Class 1 – Tascio Tablet. The Sego coinage is based on Tasciovanos’s second coinage, and may follow it, but it predates that of Eppillus. It borrows nothing from Cantian coinage. The inscription in the panel comes from Cavalryman silver (ABC 2640), the naturalistic horse is similar to the Trailing Rein silver (ABC 2631). There is no Sego inscription, which suggests all Sego coinage was issued in Tasciovanos’s lifetime.

Sego could be a mint (with coins issued by Tasciovanos). The name SEGO is not featured on the tablet quarters as might be expected for a ruler’s name. Sego coinage copies the star from the Tasciovanos Verlamio bronze (ABC 2679), which only mentions the mint – Sego Bull (ABC 2682) and Sphinx (ABC 453) are inscribed SEGO instead of VER(LAMIO). However, Sego could be a personal name, as with the Anarevito quarters (ABC 390) that are only inscribed EPPI (Eppillus). The die cutter of Sego staters (ABC 441) engraved Tasciovanos’s Carnyx (ABC 2568), both of which have the ruler’s name in large latters on the reverse, while the mint on the Carnyx type is hidden on the obverse. The Sego found on Cunobelin’s Ship type (ABC 2939) could be argued to be either a person (who died early in Cunobelin’s reign) or a mint (that did not strike any of Cunobelin’s other coins). Amminus’s coinage features the legend Sego (Lion, ABC 459 and ABC 462) and this is sometimes replaced by DVN(O) (ABC 456 and ABC 468), which is definitely a mint – the change from SEGO to DVNO may have related to Amminus’s conflict with Cunobelin. His use of SEGO could be a patronymic, as although Suetonius wrote that Amminus’s father was Cunobelin (Gaius 44.2), Sills believes that this is not the case due to the prominence of the SEGO inscription, as on Tasciovanos’s Cavalryman silver (ABC 2640), and that Amminus’s father was Sego, and his uncle Cunobelin.

See Holman, “SEGO and DUNO: reassessment and reinterpretation“, BNJ 69, 1999.

Provenance

This coin is from The London Collection of Ancient British Coins. For more information click here: The London Collection – Silbury Coins : Silbury Coins.

ex G Cottam coll. Ex M O.Bee collection. CCI? VA1848-1

This coin comes with a previous label.

Cantiaci

‘Of all the Britons the inhabitants of Kent, an entirely maritime district, are by far the most civilised, differing but little from the Gallic manner of life.’

Caesar, De Bello Gallico, book V, chapter 13.

The modern county of Kent was, according to the Romans, the homeland of the Cantiaci or Cantii. The closest portion of mainland Britain to the Continent, it is unsurprising that in the Late Iron Age the region boasted strong links with north-east France – a legacy maintained to this day, one could argue, with the continued importance of Dover and Folkestone as key cross-channel ferry ports.

Kent’s earliest Iron Age coins (and indeed, probably the earliest indigenously-produced British coins) are represented by cast bronze pieces called potins, whose alloy has a high tin content. On the basis of single finds and hoards, we know that imported gold in the form of Gallo-Belgic coinage was widely used in Kent at around the same time as the potins.

The somewhat mysterious series of uninscribed Kentish gold, including the so-called ‘Weald Net’ staters (ABC 177/BMC 2466) and ‘Corded Triangle’ quarter staters (ABC 198/BMC 2469–71) were probably struck c. 50–30/25 BC, they perhaps slightly precede a diverse group of uninscribed silver and bronze issues.

Inscribed issues belong towards the end of the Kentish coin-sequence, as is invariably the general case in Late Iron Age Britain. Their production probably began from c. 25 BC onwards and runs onward till shortly before the Claudian invasion. It is worth noting that at this time, Kent seems to have been taken over to varying extents by rulers from neighbouring regions. These rulers in turn came to issue coins in the region, even though they themselves might not originate from it, nor it reflect their main power-base.

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