In 1991, the Carlos Museum acquired 31 coins donated by Dr. John H. Ridley (1914–2005), an Atlanta physician and emeritus professor at Emory University. In a note accompanying the gift, Dr. Ridley explained that he had purchased the coins during a medical mission to El Jem, Tunisia. After a flash flood, local children had gathered coins and artifacts exposed around the site and offered them for sale in the streets. The “small semi-desert village” that Dr. Ridley described in his letter was once the prosperous Roman town of Thysdrus; today, it’s best known for its well‑preserved Roman amphitheater, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
As part of an internship at the Carlos, I have been cataloging the museum’s collection of more than 800 ancient coins, many of which have never been studied before. Of the 31 coins donated by Dr. Ridley, 30 proved to be typical examples of Roman coinage, but one was a significant discovery. Though worn and corroded, the design remains recognizable. The obverse, or heads, shows a woman facing right, crowned with a Roman interpretation of the horned crown of Isis. Originating in Egypt, Isis became one of the most widely worshipped goddesses of the Roman world. The reverse, or tails, depicts her standing on a ship, holding a billowing sail—a motif emphasizing her role as patroness of seafaring, which flourished as Alexandria rose to prominence as the Mediterranean’s largest port.
What makes this piece unusual is that it isn’t a coin at all, but a token or tessera, a coinlike object with no monetary value. Scholars call examples like this one “Festival of Isis” tokens. The design on the Carlos Museum’s example doesn’t appear in published catalogs of such tokens, but I located similar designs in private collections. Likely struck at the imperial mint in Rome for special occasions during the third century CE, their precise function is uncertain, but they were probably distributed during religious festivals.
How did this token end up at El Jem, so far from its home? One possibility is that it was carried there as a keepsake by someone who acquired it in Rome. On the other hand, because they were the same size and looked a lot like coins, these tokens could have easily passed as money. Either way, its presence at El Jem is a vivid illustration of the interconnectedness of the ancient world, where people, objects, and ideas traveled far more widely than we might imagine.
The fact that we know where this token was found is another thing that makes it special. Most tokens like this in museum collections don’t have a recorded find spot. This makes our example important, and it means that Dr. Ridley’s gift, picked up in El Jem decades ago, has become a far more important part of what he called the “jigsaw puzzle of the far-flung Roman Empire” than he, or the anonymous “street urchins” who found it, could have anticipated.
