Æ Shekel with three pellets

Struck during Carthage's consolidation of western Sicily, this bronze coinage circulated primarily as military pay and local market currency across the Punic-controlled territories of the island. The three-pellet denomination mark distinguishes it within a system that modern scholars have mapped but ancient sources never fully explained — the internal logic of Punic fractional notation remains partially reconstructed from hoards rather than documents.

Copenhagen 154–155 specimens derive largely from Sicilian findspots, which tracks with the heavy military spending of this period ahead of the First Punic War.