Siglos - Artaxerxes I / Artaxerxes II THE ROYAL COINAGE - 3rd type B - late

The royal sigloi of this period were struck not at a single imperial mint but almost certainly at Sardis, the western administrative capital where Achaemenid treasurers managed tribute flows from the Aegean satrapies. These coins circulated widely through the Greek world — Athenian soldiers and mercenaries handled them regularly — yet Persian authorities showed no interest in adapting the design to local tastes, a deliberate conservatism that persisted for over a century of essentially unchanged production.

The long overlap between Artaxerxes I and II attributions reflects a genuine die-sequence problem that remains unresolved: reign boundaries cannot be established from the coins themselves.