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Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) · other

Coin Portraying Emperor Claudius

Source of record: Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

The front (obverse) of this coin portrays the head of Emperor Claudius, facing right, laureate. The back (reverse) depicts a winged caduceus (a symbol of peace and concord) between four grain ears.

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.

A small bronze coin showing a male imperial head on one side and a stylized reverse design with a central staff/leg-like form and branching arms or rays.

The image presents two views of a single small, worn coin. The left (obverse) side shows a head in profile with hair/helmet-like styling and the suggestion of surrounding letters or marks in an arc, but the characters are too unclear to read reliably. The right (reverse) side shows a central vertical element with a forked or branching top and radiating arms or foliage-like forms; additional short marks appear around the perimeter. No clear Egyptian hieroglyphs, cartouches, or legible Greek/Coptic/Arabic text are visible; the surrounding symbols appear more like non-Egyptian coinage lettering or wear patterns. The object is consistent in appearance with a bronze Roman-era coin rather than an Egyptian inscribed artifact. The catalogue title states it portrays Emperor Claudius; however, the portrait details and any name/legend are not legible enough here to confirm Claudius specifically, so the identification cannot be verified from the image alone.

royal Roman Imperial period (approx. 1st century CE), likely Claudius era (cannot be confirmed from legible inscriptions) good
Royals Claudius (catalogue attribution; not verifiable from readable text/clear cartouches in this image)
Materials bronze (patinated metal surface)
Signs Unidentified coin-marks/letters (too worn to read) ×20

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1

English description

Reverse: AYTO KPA

Cross-references (1)

  • ARTIC-id 142249 tier-2

Similar inscriptions · by content embedding

About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian).
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.