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Obole à l'hippocampe de Ruscino
| Issuer | Sordones |
|---|---|
| Year | 200 BC - 100 BC |
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| Composition | Silver |
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| Obverse description | Stylized head facing right rendered in a schematic Celtic idiom, with boldly incised linear features indicating the eye, nose, and mouth. Radiating strokes projecting from the crown of the head suggest a solar or spiked headdress motif. The die work is deeply cut but crudely executed, consistent with the local Ibero-Celtic coinage tradition of the Roussillon region. The surfaces show natural flan irregularity characteristic of hand-struck small silver coinage. No legend or inscription is present. |
|---|---|
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| Mintage | ND (200 BC - 100 BC) |
| Additional information |
Ruscino — modern Château-Roussillon near Perpignan — was the principal oppidum of the Sordones, a pre-Roman people of the Roussillon plain whose coinage borrowed heavily from Massaliot monetary conventions while remaining distinctly local. The hippocampe type circulated in the lower Languedoc and Roussillon as small-denomination silver during a period of intense commercial contact between indigenous tribes and Greek coastal traders, well before Roman administrative consolidation of the region under the province of Gallia Narbonensis after 118 BC.
The CNH variant designation signals meaningful die differences from the principal type — Feugère and Py's corpus remains the indispensable reference for distinguishing Sordonan issues from the broader Iberian and Gaulish obole traditions that overlap geographically.