Date of publication: November 8th, 2015
Much more detailed description is available in Russian language. To open it, click here or simply press “Shift + L” on your keyboard.
Brief historical overview
The Bosporan Kingdom, also known as the Kingdom of the Cimmerian Bosporus, was an ancient state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula on the shores of the Cimmerian Bosporus, the present-day Strait of Kerch.
According to historians, Bosporan Kingdom started to exist in about 480…438 BC, and ended up with becoming a part of the Byzantine Empire in the early 500th-s AD. Thus, the lifetime of Bosporan Kingdom was about 1,000 year in a row.
Bithynian (Bosporan) Era (B.E.) and date conversion formulæ
The era used on the coins of Bospor is called Bosporan Era, though more often it is referred to as the Bithynian Era. Bithynian Era's 1st year falls on the year 297 BC. Before we get into it, let's understand what Bithynia is and what had happened in 297 BC.
Bithynia was an ancient region, kingdom and Roman province in the northwest of Asia Minor (also known as Anatolia). In 297 BC the ruler of Bithynia named Zipoites assumed the title of king (basileus) after a huge win against Macedonian army.
Obviously the Bithynian Era had been used on the coins of the Kingdom of Bithynia itself (for example, during the rule of Nikomede II (king: 149–127 BC), Nikomede III (king: 127–94 BC), Nikomede IV (king: 94–74 BC) etc).
So now let's get back to the Bosporan Kingdom.
Bithynian Era started to appear on the coins of the Bosporan Kingdom at the time of rule of Pharnaces II (of Pontus) (his years of rule: 97–47 BC). Images of coins in this system were taken from the website bosporan-kingdom.com, and the earliest coin there with date specified in Bithynian Era (B.E.) was issued in 243 B.E. (55 BC), whereas the latest one — in 639 B.E. (342 AD). Thus, the date range of those coins is about 397 years.
As you can see from the direct converter and the coin samples in the section “Images of coins”, characters of the ancient Greek alphabet are used on these coins. I'm saying “ancient” because several characters are not used in the nowadays Greek script (and alphabet, apparently); these ones are as follows: stigma (6), koppa (90) and sampi (900). Beneath is a small table with those characters.
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
| Α |
Β |
Γ |
Δ |
Ε |
Ϛ |
Ζ |
Η |
Θ |
| alpha |
beta |
gamma |
delta |
epsilon |
stigma |
zeta |
eta |
theta |
| 10 |
20 |
30 |
40 |
50 |
60 |
70 |
80 |
90 |
| Ι |
Κ |
Λ |
Μ |
Ν |
Ξ |
Ο |
Π |
q |
| iota |
kappa |
lambda |
mu |
nu |
xi |
omicron |
pi |
koppa |
| 100 |
200 |
300 |
400 |
500 |
600 |
700 |
800 |
900 |
| Ρ |
Σ |
Τ |
Υ |
Φ |
Χ |
Ψ |
Ω |
Ϡ |
| rho |
sigma |
tau |
upsilon |
phi |
chi |
psi |
omega |
sampi |
Every character has its numerical value, and in the date inscription characters go from the smaller ones to bigger ones (Greek is read left-to-right, unlike Hebrew writing system). As an example, 621 will be written as 1 + 20 + 600, i.e. ΑΚΧ.
Now it's time to mention the formulae used in the date conversion. First of all you should understand that the Bithynian Era started in the BC time and ended in AD time (and starting from 297 BC, which is year 1 B.E., it is always positive), but Year 0 (zero) in the Gregorian calendar didn't exist at all. Having said this, here's the formula for direct conversion (from Bithynian Era to the years of the Gregorian calendar) and reverse conversion (from BC or AD years to the Bithynian Era):
- Year Greg.cal. = {Year B.E. − 298, for BC years; Year B.E. − 297, for AD years};
- Year B.E. = {Year Greg. [BC] + 298, for BC years; Year Greg. [AD] + 297, for AD years}.
Some of the useful correlations between certain ancient coin denominations
Yes, that's true. Even on the ancient coins (well, on some certain types) you can see the their face value. And — guess what — those values are written using Greek letters (including ancient ones). There's one important difference between coin's date inscription and face value inscription using Green characters: in the case of face value inscription, characters go from the bigger positions to smaller ones (hundreds to tens and units).
You might ask, for coins below from Semis to Triple Sestertius — what is the basic unit, multiples of which form this or that bigger coin denomination? The answer is, Uncia — tiny coin in Roman Empire: 11–14 mm in diameter with weigh about 0.8–1.2 grams. This definition of Uncia (tiny coin) not to be confused with the ounce (28.34 grams). Inscription «SC» on the coins stands for «Senatu Consulto».
By the way, what's really interesting, uncia is a derivation from unus, i.e. one or unit. Check this link to get to know more on this.
| Name of the coin denomination |
How it's written on the coins |
Bit-by-bit |
Resulting value |
| Semis (also see wiki) |
Ϛ |
= 6 |
6 |
| Assarius |
ΙΒ |
= 10 + 2 |
12 |
| Dupondius |
ΚΔ |
= 20 + 4 |
24 |
| Sestertius |
ΜΗ |
= 40 + 8 |
48 |
| Double Sestertius |
qς |
= 90 + 6 |
96 |
| Triple Sestertius |
ΡΜΔ |
= 100 + 40 + 4 |
144 |
| Double Denarius |
Β |
= 2 |
2 |
As Russia (at that time, Ancient Rus') adopted Greek script (obviously with certain modifications), letters there had also been using to denote numerals (years, in particular) till the end of the first quarter of the 18th century.
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