Nomos 39

ATTICA. Athens. Circa 220-180 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 33 mm, 16.66 g, 12 h), struck under the magistrate Po... Head of Athena to right, wearing a simple Attic helmet with a single crest, a series of three loops over the visor and with tendrils over the bowl; border of dots. Rev. Α -ΘΕ / ΠΟ Owl, with closed wings, standing facing on a Panathenaic amphora lying on its side to right; in the field to left, cicada; all within an olive wreath tied at the bottom. Cf. BnF FRBNF41814752 / ark:/12148/cb41814752b (struck from a very similar obverse die but with a different magistrate and symbol). Cf. HGC 4, 1601 (for the general type). For an exhaustive series of early Athenian New Style tetradrachms, but all with triple-crested helmets, see, C. Augé, Les débuts des tétradrachmes d'Athènes du "nouveau style": un trésor trouvé près de Gaziantep en 1994, Anatolia Antiqua 1997, V, pp. 44-82. No coin similar to the one here was present in that hoard. Of great rarity, beautifully struck and of very fine Hellenistic style. Lovely darkish surfaces as found. Minor marks and minor double-striking on the obverse, otherwise, extremely fine.

What an extraordinary coin this is! It is transitional in every way, especially as compared to the great series of early pieces in the Gaziantep Hoard. Here Athena wears a simple helmet with a single crest, very similar to the pieces published by Nicolet-Pierre in the Bibliothèque nationale and elsewhere. They have closely similar helmets but they lack the olive wreath on the reverse and have the legend ΑΘΕ arranged vertically, not horizontally as here and on all the normal issues that come later. For some of her examples, see: https://greekcoinage.org/iris/id/athens.nicolet-pierre_1982.1-11. It is, however, worth noting that one of her "old style" tetradrachms has a cicada as a symbol (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8564564v#) and another has the letters ΠΟ combined with the symbol of a Panathenaic amphora (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b85645673). Thus, our coin is closely linked to them chronologically.