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Stater - Uncertain Dynast

Issuer Dynasts of Lycia (Achaemenid Satrapies)
Year 500 BC - 480 BC
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Currency Drachm (550-330 BCE)
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Obverse description Forepart of a boar advancing to the right in high relief, rendered in the archaic Lycian style with bold, expressive musculature. The animal's bristled dorsal ridge is prominently detailed, and the snout, eye, and forelegs are carefully delineated. The figure occupies the full flan within a plain raised border, the flan itself being characteristically irregular and slightly ovoid. No legend or inscription appears in the field.
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Reverse description A triskeles motif — three curved legs radiating from a central point — displayed within a square pelleted (beaded) border, all set within a deeply recessed incuse square. The triskeles is rendered with broad, sweeping curved arms in the early archaic manner. The incuse square technique is characteristic of early fifth-century BCE Lycian coinage. No inscription or legend is present.
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Additional information

Lycia during this period occupied an uncomfortable position — nominally subject to Achaemenid Persia following Harpagus's conquest of the region around 540 BC, yet local dynasts retained striking authority and issued coinage in their own names rather than in any Persian king's. The stater weight standard used here reflects Lycian convention rather than the Persian siglos system, a quiet assertion of administrative independence within a tribute-paying territory.

Attribution to a specific dynast remains unresolved. SNG von Aulock 4058 places this piece among the uncertain dynasts precisely because the iconographic and epigraphic evidence doesn't align cleanly with the known ruling sequences at Xanthos, Tlos, or Pinara during these two decades.

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