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Obol
| Issuer | Abdera |
|---|---|
| Year | 492 BC - 470 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Obol (⅙) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Griffin seated to left in the archaic Greek style, the body rendered in low relief with the right forepaw raised and the beak open in a snarling posture. The wings are folded along the back and the tail curls upward behind the haunches. A row of pellets arcs across the upper field, serving as a decorative border element characteristic of early Abderite coinage. The flan is irregular and slightly ovoid, consistent with hand-struck production of the late Archaic period. |
|---|---|
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| Mintage | ND (492 BC - 470 BC) |
| Additional information |
Abdera's coinage from this period is among the most carefully studied of any Thracian Greek colonial mint, largely because the city used a rotating magistrate system in which individual officials stamped their names onto the dies — making May's 1966 corpus an unusually precise tool for sequencing issues. The #124 obol sits within a magistrate grouping that predates the Persian destruction of the city around 490 BC, after which Abdera was resettled by refugees from Teos.
That resettlement reset the mint's administrative structure entirely, complicating attribution of pieces straddling the destruction horizon.