Didrachm

Tenedos, the small Aegean island positioned at the mouth of the Troad, controlled anchorage rights for ships awaiting favorable winds into the Hellespont — a geographic chokehold that made it commercially significant well beyond its size. This didrachm was struck during the period of Persian dominance over the eastern Aegean following Cyrus's campaigns, yet Tenedos maintained its own civic coinage, suggesting a degree of administrative autonomy under Achaemenid overlordship that varied considerably island to island.

The Janiform type used by Tenedos is among the earliest and most distinctive in the Greek island series, with no direct parallel in neighboring civic coinages.