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Description
The National Museum of Slovenia has in its collection two silver ingots from the mid-4th century, unfortunately, without information about their context of discovery. The ingots are in the shape of a double axe-head, which is the commonest form of Late Roman silver ingots. Their weight corresponds to that of a Roman pound. Both have on them a stamped portrait of the Roman Emperor Constantius II dated to 350–351. In addition to the portrait, one of the ingots has a punched POLIPI inscription and the other two stamped inscriptions that read EOR NKA and EOPTOC / NKA. The XRF analyses have confirmed a 96–98% purity of silver known to have been used in the silver ingot production. Similar ingots were fairly common in the 4th century, out of this group, the paper focuses on the extremely rare examples stamped with imperial portraits.
