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Sceat Series E, variety E
| Issuer | Frisia |
|---|---|
| Year | 695-740 |
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| Composition | Silver |
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| Obverse description | Highly stylised and degenerate facing or profile head rendered in a debased Anglo-Frisian manner, with schematic facial features indicated by small pellets and short curved lines in the field. The design reflects the progressive abstraction characteristic of later Series E sceattas, where the original classical portrait prototype has been reduced to a loose arrangement of geometric and linear elements. No legend or inscription is present. |
|---|---|
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| Mintage | ND (695-740) |
| Additional information |
Series E sceats were almost certainly struck in Frisia — Dorestad is the most consistently proposed mint site, a trading emporium on the Rhine that was, by the early eighth century, one of the busiest commercial nodes in northwest Europe. The sheer volume of Series E finds along North Sea trade routes, particularly in England and the Low Countries, points to a coin functioning less as a political instrument than as a merchant's tool, circulating freely across political boundaries well before any formal monetary agreement existed to facilitate that.
Variety E within the series is distinguished by specific pellet and flan characteristics documented by Metcalf across pages 216–19, representing one of the finer subdivisions in what is already a densely catalogued series.