Lot 3585

Description

Thrace - Tauric Chersonesus, Pantikapaion, (c.320 B.C.), gold stater, (9.07 gm), obv. head of bearded Pan to left, with animal ear, wearing ivy wreath, rev. horned griffin with curved wings standing to left on an ear of corn, right foreleg raised, head facing, holding spear in jaws **P A N* around, (S.1693, SNG BM 867, Traite pl.353, 20; Kraay - Hirmer Pl.142, 440, Anokhin 109 Pl.3, SNG Pushkin 782). A spectacular coin with very minor surface mark on obverse, well centred, good extremely fine and very rare.

Pantikapaion was founded by Greek colonists from Miletos in the late seventh century B.C. Situated on the west side of the Cimmerian Bosporos, in what is now the Crimea, it achieved great prosperity through its exploitation of the abundant fisheries of the Straits and the export of wheat from the Crimea. This wealth is attested by its splendid gold coinage which commenced in the mid-fourth century B.C. and by the magnificently furnished rock tombs of its principal citizens in the same period. Later, it was to become a regional capital of the kingdom of Mithradates VI of Pontos (120-63 BC) and later still the seat of the kings of Bosporos (first century BC - fourth century AD). The coinage of Pantikapaion seems to have commenced with silver issues in the latter part of the fifth century B.C., but it is for its beautiful gold staters that the mint is chiefly noted. They depict the head of the god Pan (a pun on the name of the city) and on the reverse the griffin which Herodotos describes as being the guardian of the remote sources of gold. (acknowledgement CNG).