Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 236. Estimate $20000.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $20000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IONIA, Phokaia(?). Circa 625-575 BC. EL Stater (16.47 gm). Head of a griffin right, tongue protruding from open jaws, knob on forehead and two tendrils curling over neck / Rough incuse square. Bodenstedt 1a=Robinson, Electrum pg. 589, 7=Sotheby's Hunt Sale I, lot 55 (listed as "unique"). Good VF, obverse die slightly worn. The second specimen known, from a different pair of dies. [See color enlargement on plate 4] ($20,000)

Griffin heads were among the more sacred votive objects dedicated at Greek sanctuaries and burial sites, both as individual votives and as decorative accoutrements of other votive objects. Though they are found at many sites from Etruria to Asia Minor, sanctuaries at Olympia and Samos have produced important examples, including some with votive inscriptions. These votives were important, spiritual objects that sometimes assumed monumental scale. The religious character of the griffin on this stater can hardly be doubted, as it is crowned with a knob protruding above the eyes, a key feature of the bronze votive griffin heads that have survived antiquity. By the time griffins had assumed the role of civic badge rather than religious emblem on coinage, they lose the crowning knob. In light of this, it is understandable that griffins are more prevalent on Archaic and early Classical coinage than on later issues.

The mint of this stater is not known with certainty. Phokaia is perhaps the most likely candidate on the basis of style, fabric, and metrology, as well as the fact that it uses a griffin head as a coin type on silver trihemiobols of the late 6th century BC. Abdera in Thrace and Teos in Ionia also used the griffin as a badge on their Archaic coinage. Another possibility is the island of Samos, off the coast of Ionia, which in the post-Geometric period was an important center of production for votive griffin heads, which were used locally at the sanctuary of Hera, and presumably also were exported.