Holed Litra of Enna

[Lelouch]

Ciao e tutti,

I have recently acquired a holed litra of Enna (more accurately Henna)

 

Very interesting is that for such a rare die, I believe Campana records 2 obverses and 2 reverses (though I believe Campana had deleted his CNAI from Academia.edu please let me know as this link https://www.academia.edu/26923426/CNAI_SICILIA_ENNA_440_36_a_C_ which used to work no longer does), many examples of this series are holed.

In "Manganaro, Giacomo (1999). Ancora sul mikron kerma siceliota, in: Revue Belge de Numismatique et de Sigillographie Vol: CXLV, La Société royale de numismatique de Belgique, Brussels, pp. 61-68." Manganaro ascribes them to a cultic function especially as we see the decidedly religious figure of Demeter worshiping. Admittedly he describes all of the holed litra as having a cultic function (as I think older scholars often presumed a lot of things were cultic/ritualistic), but this must be certainly true for Enna due to the amount of samples we have.

Manganaro lists another 5 examples, for a total of 6 including mine.

1. Lelouch Collection #152– 0.59 g, 14 moment
2. British Museum inv. 1946,0101.931– 0.67 g https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1946-0101-931
3. American Numismatic Society inv. 1987.32.104(SNG ANS 3 1322) – 0.38g https://numismatics.org/collection/1987.32.104
4. Private Collection (illustrated in Manganaro Pl. VIII-IX, 1/1a) – 0.62g

5. Well Known Italo-Swiss Collection– unpublished, documented by Manganaro (1999) (I am curious does anyone know who the Well Known Coll. italo-svizzera is?)
6. Baron Vincenzo Cammarata Collection at Enna– documented by Manganaro (1999)

I truly believe some event or some actual ritual must have caused these specimens to be holed as for such a rare die to have so many holed it is improbable to be from a more normal use.
It really is very intriguing, but unfortunately all we can do is just speculate.

Any additional specimens or further information would be greatly appreciated; I would also be very interested to hear of other holed Sicilian fractional issues. 

Modificato 1 ora fa da Lelouch