Denga - Vasily I Dmitriyevich Cyrillic legend / Samson with a lion

Vasily I spent much of his reign navigating tribute obligations to the Golden Horde while simultaneously consolidating Muscovite territorial gains inherited from Dmitry Donskoy. The Samson type appears across several Russian principalities in the early fifteenth century, borrowed ultimately from Byzantine and Western heraldic sources — its precise political meaning in a Muscovite context remains debated among specialists, though some read it as a deliberate assertion of dynastic strength during a period of fractured Rus authority.

At roughly 0.67g, these dengas reflect the lighter weight standard that Moscow adopted as silver supplies tightened. HP II#1516 is a tight attribution within a series plagued by die overlaps between principalities.