Egypt Athena counterfeit?

JCPokey222

This is a coin (loosely speaking) I picked up as part of a handful during a recent trip. I assume it's a tourist fake modeled on an Greek tetradrachm, based on the similarity to images of Athena on those. The same profile image features on both sides. It's thick and fairly heavy (14g). I don't care that it's fake--it's still something interesting I picked up in a market in Cairo! But would be interested for any info on where/how these are produced.

SimonW

I would say, at first glance, they are cast.

Sapyx

Yes. Not even the ancients made coins where both sides were identical in design, nor with an edge that looked like that.

The provenance does not help either. It is illegal, and has been illegal for quite some time now, to sell genuine ancient artifacts (including coins) to tourists in Egypt. Selling replicas, fantasies and other fakes, on the other hand, is perfectly legal and even encouraged.

As for where/how they are made, fake coin-making is a profitable industry in the Middle East. Practically every ancient site has a little street market of souvenir-hawkers at the main exit, and these almost always have replica ancient coins for sale. They are usually cast, as this one seems to have been. It almost certainly won't be actual silver. They also have the techniques of artificial aging down to a fine art, though an ancients expert can usually tell at a glance the difference between fake and genuine patina. My favourite is "feed the fake coins to a goat, then fish them out of the dung pile a few weeks later".

JCPokey222

Thanks, both, for insights. In this case, I picked up ~70 random coins in bulk for a song, and got back a few nice ones: 2 1930s and 2 1940s Egyptian Milliemes plus a hexagonal, silver, 1944 2 Qirsh and a 1933 Iraqi 4 fils--my first coin of any sort with a "4" denomination! As far as I'm concerned, this one's a nice souvenir, but I'll know to keep an eye out for them next time.