| Description de l’avers |
Bearded male head facing left in high relief, rendered in the Egypto-Persian artistic tradition characteristic of Philistian coinage. The face displays strongly defined features including a prominent nose, fleshy lips, and a full, striated beard with incised linear detailing. A round earring is visible at the ear, and a grape cluster or similarly granular vegetal element appears behind the head in the right field, suggesting possible Dionysiac or Near Eastern iconographic influence. |
| Écriture de l’avers |
Connectez-vous pour voir les détails |
| Légende de l’avers |
Connectez-vous pour voir les détails |
| Description du revers |
A Phoenician palmette — also identified as a paradise flower — depicted in bold relief at the centre of the field, with symmetrical volute scrolls flanking the base and a budding floral crown at the apex. The motif rests on a low stepped base or platform, rendered within a dotted border square, itself set within a shallow incuse square formed by the hammered die technique. The overall composition is characteristic of the floral and vegetal reverse types common to Persian-period Philistian civic coinage. |
| Écriture du revers |
Connectez-vous pour voir les détails |
| Légende du revers |
Connectez-vous pour voir les détails |
| Tranche |
Connectez-vous pour voir les détails |
| Atelier |
Connectez-vous pour voir les détails |
| Tirage |
Connectez-vous pour voir les détails |
The Philistian city coinages of the fifth and fourth centuries BC remain among the least-understood series in ancient numismatics — minting authority, civic attribution, and even the identities of the issuing cities are actively contested. Gitler and Tal's landmark cataloguing work, published in 2006, brought systematic order to a series previously scattered across auction records and museum drawers with little coherent classification. Even so, XVII.2D sits in a group where city attribution remains genuinely open.
Production ceased abruptly with Alexander's campaigns through the Levant in 332 BC.