Coins of the Emperor Julian

A couple of days away always means a full in-box, so I shall be playing catch up. There have been a couple of stories about coins of the Emperor Julian in the UK. Thisisdevon.co.uk has the story of the replica of a solidus from the reign of Julian that is to be presented to the St Agnes Museum in Cornwall. It is one of only nine Roman gold coins found in the county:

Clare Murton was sorting through a large amount of material that had been given to the museum by the family of a Dr Whitworth – one of five generations of St Agnes GPs – when she came across a piece of paper bearing a sealing wax impression of a Roman coin. With it was an account written by Dr Whitworth in 1910, which reads: "In 1910 Mrs John Tonkin of Carn Golla picked up in a field recently enclosed from the Common, which had just been scuffed or harrowed, a Roman gold coin the size of a half-sovereign, bright and in perfect preservation."

Clare sent an image of the impression to the British Museum to ask if they could identify the coin and her message reached Roger Bland, Head of the Department of Portable Antiquities and Treasure. Mr Bland was very excited by it because he recognised it as an impression of a gold coin of the Roman emperor Julian (AD 360-63) which was known to have been found at St Agnes in 1910, although the coin itself had long since been lost and no detailed description of it survived.

Even more intriguingly, Mr Bland was able to link the discovery with the record of another Roman gold coin of Valentinian I, emperor immediately after Julian, which was recorded as having been found at St Agnes in 1680. He said it would be a great coincidence for two coins made nearly at the same time to have been lost by accident in the same area and that it was more likely the two coins were buried together and so form a hoard.

Sadly the image of the coin on the website it too small to see in any great detail. Elsewhere a fourth century coin hoard has been found in Scarborough, according to the Scarborough Evening News:

The find of 75 silver coins and 10 bronze, dating back to the year 355, was made on farmland near Filey.

They were issued during the reign of several Roman emperors, including Julian, Valentinian and Valens.

The discovery was officially confirmed as treasure by Scarborough coroner Michael Oakley at a special inquest. That means the British Museum Trust has "first refusal" on the find.

The inquest heard how the coins were discovered by three members of Bridlington Metal Detecting Society last September. Robert Booth, who was one of those to uncover the coins, said: "We have had permission to search on the land since 2000 but never found anything. On Sunday September 14 we found coins which were just beneath the surface.

The date of AD355 is of course rubbish.