by David Kelly, B.A., F.S.A., A.M.A.
The two Celtic coins illustrated were purchased recently by the Kent Archaeological Society. The Society already possessed ten Gallo-Belgic gold staters and one quarter-stater, but only one inscribed or dynastic coin, a quarter-stater of Cunobelin from Birchington. Maidstone Museum also possesses ten staters, but again these are all Gallo-Belgic or British uninscribed. Thus the two coins described here are valuable additions to the collections, which are normally displayed together. Strangely enough, neither collection contains a single bronze Celtic coin and there is but one potin coin.
The little silver coin was found in Snodland about two years ago. The obverse shows a rather grotesque head, the reverse a curious horse on a field of ring and ring-and-dot ornament. There is no exact parallel, but the coin falls within Allen's British L.X group, found mainly north of the Thames and contemporary with the British L staters, dated by him to between 40-20 B.C.
The gold stater of Cunobelin was found in a garden at Sittingbourne in 1951. The obverse shows an ear of barley and the legend CAMV, for Camulodunum (Colchester) in Essex, the Capital of Cunobelin. The reverse has a prancing horse, with a bough above and ring-and-dot below. The reverse legend is invariably CVN or CVNO, for Cunobelin, but since the reverse has been struck slightly off-center only the CV are visible.
Cunobelin was the king reigning over the Catuvellauni and Trinovantes from about A.D. 10 to A.D. 40. If, as is usually accepted, the presence of coins in fairly large numbers indicates the dominion of their issuer as well as their use in commerce, Cunobelin ruled over an area which stretched from Essex westward along the north side of the Thames as far as Oxfordshire and northwest to the River Welland. Outside this area upwards of thirty of his coins have been found in East Kent and D. F. Allen thought that Cunobelin had acquired power there by about A.D. 25. West Kent has produced only four of Cunobelin's coins, though there are over a dozen issued by his father Tasciovanus.
Cunobelin issued coins in gold, silver, and bronze in very large quantities, bronze being the commonest, on the basis of finds, and silver the least numerous. Allen has suggested that over the thirty-year period of his reign Cunobelin might have issued as many as a million gold staters. In his study of Cunobelin's gold coins, Allen, by means of die analysis, divided the staters into five series, the second to fifth having the ear of barley and prancing horse. The Sittingbourne stater belongs to the later coins, with ring-and-dot under the horse, of the third series, to which Allen gave the name Wild because of the untamed appearance of the horse, and may thus have been issued in the middle period of Cunobelin's reign.
