500 Francs Guinéens Tiyi

Guinea's 1970 commemorative series was issued under Sékou Touré's government, which had broken dramatically from France in 1958 — the only French West African territory to vote "no" in de Gaulle's constitutional referendum, sacrificing all French financial and administrative support overnight. By 1970, Touré was cultivating non-Western alliances and projecting an Africanist cultural identity, which explains the decision to honor Tiye, the influential 18th-Dynasty Egyptian queen consort of Amenhotep III, as a symbol of pan-African heritage. The coins were almost certainly struck for the international collector market rather than domestic circulation, given Guinea's economic isolation at the time.