Siglos - Baalmelek II

Obverse description	Heracles striding to the right, depicted in the Phoenician-Cypriot artistic tradition, wearing the lion skin and carrying a bow in his extended left hand and a club raised in his right. The figure is rendered in a robust, archaic style characteristic of Kitian coinage of the late fifth century BC, with the field largely plain around the deity.
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Reverse script	Cypriot Syllabic
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Additional information	Kition, on Cyprus's southern coast, operated as a Phoenician city-state under a dynasty of priest-kings whose authority was inseparable from the cult of Astarte. Baalmelek II ruled during a period of intense pressure from Athens, which launched its disastrous Cypriot campaigns in the mid-fifth century. The island's strategic value kept it perpetually contested between Persian, Phoenician, and Greek interests, and Kition's coinage served partly to assert Phoenician cultural identity against Hellenizing neighbors. The BMC Greek #10 reference places this among the better-documented issues of the series, struck to the Persian weight standard — a deliberate alignment with Achaemenid economic networks rather than the Aeginetan or Attic systems dominant elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean.