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Drachm - Philo...
| Issuer | Sinope (Paphlagonia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 410 BC - 350 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Orientation | Variable alignment ↺ |
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| Obverse description | Bare head of the city nymph Sinope facing left, her hair bound in a sakkos with loose strands visible above the forehead and gathered at the nape. The facial features are rendered in fine archaic-classical style, with a well-defined profile, almond-shaped eye, and softly modelled cheek and chin. A small earring is discernible at the ear. The field is plain, and the flan presents the characteristic irregular edge typical of hand-struck Pontic coinage of this period. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse script | Greek |
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| Additional information |
Sinope was the dominant Greek colonial city on the Black Sea's southern shore, and its silver coinage circulated widely across Pontic trade networks connecting the Greek world to Scythian and Anatolian markets. The city controlled significant timber and fish-salting industries, and its mint output reflects that commercial weight. This drachm type, attributed to the magistrate Philo, belongs to a series where individual civic officials signed issues — a practice that assigned accountability and likely prestige to the minting authority.
The SNG BM Black Sea corpus remains the primary reference for Black Sea colonial coinage precisely because this material was systematically underrepresented in earlier standard references.