See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration! or register with email

Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!

Æ

Issuer Melos (Cyclades)
Year 300 BC - 100 BC
Type Log in to see details
Value Log in to see details
Currency Log in to see details
Composition Log in to see details
Weight Log in to see details
Diameter 16 mm
Thickness Log in to see details
Shape Log in to see details
Technique Log in to see details
Orientation Log in to see details
Engraver(s) Log in to see details
In circulation to Log in to see details
Reference(s) Log in to see details
Obverse description Pomegranate fruit depicted facing, rendered in high relief with characteristic lobed crown and segmented body, filling the central field. The fruit is shown frontally, its naturalistic surface texture carefully articulated by the die engraver. The design is set within a plain circular border, with no legend or additional devices.
Obverse script Log in to see details
Obverse lettering Log in to see details
Reverse description Log in to see details
Reverse script Greek
Reverse lettering Log in to see details
Edge Log in to see details
Mint Log in to see details
Mintage Log in to see details
Additional information

Melos, the southwesternmost of the major Cycladic islands, struck bronze coinage during a period when the island's population had been entirely replaced — the Athenians massacred the adult male inhabitants in 416 BC and settled the island with their own colonists, an event recorded in devastating detail by Thucydides. The autonomous Melian bronze issues of the Hellenistic period therefore represent a community reconstituted under Macedonian-era realities, not a continuous civic tradition.

The BMC reference places this among a small, tightly clustered series with very limited die variety.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE