Hemidrachm

Priene's coinage is inseparable from the city's reconstruction. The old city was abandoned entirely and a new Priene built on a grid plan up the slopes of Mykale — funded in part by Alexander the Great, who paid for the temple of Athena Polias and left an inscription there that survives today. This hemidrachm falls within the generation immediately following that rebuilding, when civic identity and new monumental architecture were both still freshly asserted.

SNG Copenhagen 1082 represents the principal reference point for this type, the Danish collection having acquired its specimen through early 20th-century dispersals of Asia Minor material.