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Research Coins: The Coin Shop

 
156326. Sold For $2250

TAURIC CHERSONESOS. Pantikapaion? Circa 500-480 BC. AR Diobol (12mm, 1.24 gm). Roaring lion's head right, with spiky mane / Rough incuse punch. MacDonald -; SNG BM Black Sea -; SNG Stancomb -; Anokhin -. Good VF, dark toning. Rare and apparently unpublished.

Although the archaic lion's head type is so common as to be almost a generic type, the present piece has a distinct style and a provenence that places it somewhere in the Taurid penninsula. The type would be linked to the facing lion's scalp pieces of Pantikapion, and is likely the earliest coinage of that city. Pantikapion was founded around 600 BC by colonists from Miletos, and archaeological evidence indicates it was a major town by the end of the century, suggesting the possibility that civic coinage may have begun around 500 BC, a few decades before the earliest coins dated by MacDonald and others. Like many of the early Pantikapion silver fractions, it is almost impossible to determine what weight weight standard it was struck on, or its proper denomination