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Chalkon
| Issuer | Kaunos |
|---|---|
| Year | 350 BC - 300 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 1.23 g |
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| Obverse description | Bull butting right in aggressive lunging posture, depicted in lively relief above a straight groundline. A wreath appears in the upper right field, serving as a civic emblem of Kaunos. The rendering of the animal is bold and naturalistic in the Greek provincial tradition, with musculature indicated by textured surface work. The composition fills the flan effectively despite the small module of the coin. |
|---|---|
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| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A sphinx seated right on a straight groundline, with folded wings rising behind its leonine body and a curling tail visible to the left. The figure is rendered in competent, if somewhat compact, relief typical of Karian civic bronzes of the fourth century BC. The ethnic legend ΚΑΥ is distributed in the field, with Κ and Α to the right of the sphinx and Υ to the left, identifying the issuing city of Kaunos. The groundline and field arrangement follow standard conventions for this series. |
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| Additional information |
Kaunos occupied an awkward political position throughout the fourth century — nominally under Persian suzerainty, then briefly absorbed into the Hekatomnid dynastic sphere of Karia under Maussollos, all while maintaining enough civic independence to strike its own bronze. This small denomination would have served purely local exchange needs during a period when the city's harbor trade made it wealthy enough to matter but small enough to be perpetually subject to larger powers.
The references spread across BMC, Copenhagen, and Ashmolean suggest a recognized type with multiple die pairings rather than a single unified issue — consistent with municipal bronze production across several decades rather than a single emission.