officially. Sometimes this became quite a vast industry. One site in Egypt has
produced some 15,000 clay coin moulds for issues of the later third and early
fourth centuriesAD. This site was close to a Roman military camp, but it is
unclear whether the military authorities approved of this forging activity or
not. Other sites in Egypt and the Near East have also produced large quantities
of moulds dating to the earlytomidfourth century. Most of these moulds
would have produced copies of small denomination coins for local circulation,
and indeed many such cast coins have been found in excavations in the port
city of Alexandria. It is obvious which coins are real when viewed under a
scanning electron microscope, which clearly shows the different
microstructure of (official) struck coins compared to (unofficial) cast ones.
The production of the fake coins was of itself very professional in some
cases; a real coin was pressed into wet clay moulds, which were then stacked
together. The molten metal was then poured through the connected moulds ̧
producing many coins in a single operation. Although the quality of the
casting is often poor, the sheer quantity of the forgeries and the moulds
suggests that these coins were probably more often found in use than the real
versions, and that the forgers were not often apprehended by the authorities. It
seems probable that the governors were prepared to turn a blind eye to these
activities, simply to keep trade flowing.13.
Clay moulds for producing fake coins have been found across Britain too,
and many of the lower denomination coins that have been found here have
been of the‘unofficial’types.
Counterfeiting of precious metal coins was another matter. An unusual group
of forgeries came to light when found by a metal detectorist in Somerset in
- Among a hoard of 670 coins, seventytwo were found to be forgeries.
Dating from the fourth century, they were among coins from many different
official mints; oddly, some of the forgeries had an identical or higher silver
content than real coins. Stephen Minnitt of the Somerset County Museum, said:
‘They were probably an unofficial attempt to keep coinage supplies up to
required levels. A few did have a copper base and were then plated with silver
and those are the more genuine forgeries.’If that is not a contradiction in terms!
Plating base metal with gold or silver was the usual way to forge higher
denomination coins, as it had been in the Greek period. Unless the plating was
particularly thin, the deception could have gone unrecognized for some time
while the coins remained in use. Only if the coin was scratched or broken
would the base metal core become evident. One example of a forgery,
however, might have been easier to spot. A‘silver’denarius was found by a
path near Brighton in Sussex in 2010. A coin of this denomination would have
CLASSICAL CRIMES