In a note, published in 1934, on the currencies of East Syria under the Roman Empire, I described some clay tesserae from Palmyra which resemble coins in their shape and types, and suggested that they might have been used to supplement the regular metallic currency in emergencies. Some further examples of these tesserae have come to my notice, which add a few details to the account given, and a kindred group has been described in the reports of the excavations at Seleucia-on-Tigris.

The tesserae stamped with designs borrowed from official coins, in all the cases that I have seen, are copies of the types of Sidon noted in the previous article, B.M.C. 87 of the second century B.C. (Fig. 2) and B.M.C. 217 of A.D. 116/7 (Fig. 1). There are now three specimens of the former and four of the latter in the Ashmolean Museum, all from the same dies: they seem to have been produced by a process which resembled striking from dies rather than moulding.