Æ15

Pantikapaion, the dominant Greek colony on the Cimmerian Bosphorus, controlled the grain trade routes feeding Athens and later the Hellenistic kingdoms — a commercial position that sustained a remarkably active mint across several centuries. This small bronze belongs to a phase when the city operated under the Spartokid dynasty, a Thracian ruling family that maintained Greek cultural forms while navigating shifting allegiances between the Pontic steppe and the Mediterranean world.

HGC 7, 116 places this type firmly in the mid-third century, a period when Pantikapaion's autonomy was gradually being pressured by the expanding kingdom of Pontus.