1/10 Stater - Magas

Magas governed Kyrene first as regent, then as de facto king, for nearly five decades — an extraordinarily long hold on a prosperous grain-exporting city that repeatedly tested its loyalty to the Ptolemaic crown. This fractional issue belongs to a period when Magas was actively distancing himself from his half-brother Ptolemy II, eventually declaring outright independence around 276 BC and styling himself king. The small gold fraction likely served commercial needs in a city grown wealthy on the silphium trade, a plant so prized by antiquity that Kyrene placed it at the center of its monetary identity for generations.