Nomos 16

KINGS OF ILLYRIA. Monounios, circa 300-280 BC. Stater (Silver, 23 mm, 10.61 g, 7 h), Dyrrhachion. Cow standing left, her head bent back to right to suckle her calf, kneeling right beneath her; above, lower jawbone of a boar to left. Rev. ΒΑCΙΛΕΩC - ΜΟΝΟΥΝΙΟΥ - ΔYPPA Double stellate pattern in the form of a square within a double linear border; in the field to right, club; all within linear circle. S. Gjongecaj. “Le Trésor de Kreshpan (Albanie)”, RN 153 (1998), emission 2. HGC 3, 67. Maier 90. Extremely rare as a type, with only one example recorded from the Kreshpan hoard. Well struck and clear. Extremely fine.

Monounios was an Illyrian king about whom little is known (it has also been suggested that he was a Dardanian). He seems to have been involved with the Macedonian succession question after the death of Lysimachos; a helmet inscribed with his name seems to have been found in Lake Ohrid, which suggests that he was a pioneer of early submersible warfare. The coins prove that he was able to control Dyrrhachion for a short period in the early third century BC; his name and title even appears on the city's staters (as this one), and that must mean that the city was fully under his control (there are coins in the name of his successor Mytilios as well). These coins are quite rare. However, in a late Greek historical manuscript preserved on Mount Athos (one that shows clear palaeographic signs that it had been copied from a late Hellenistic original) we learn that, for religious reasons, he abdicated his power and became something of a local prophet. He subsequently gained a considerable following of devotées who were known as Monounioi and lived by aggressively seeking donations in return for copies of his mystical writings.