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Tetradrachm
| Issuer | Tenedos (Troad) |
|---|---|
| Year | 100 BC - 70 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 15.98 g |
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| Obverse description | Janiform (double-faced) conjoined busts facing in opposite directions: to the left, a laureate male head rendered in the Hellenistic style with wavy hair and strong features; to the right, a diademed female head with elaborately dressed hair secured by a diadem. The two heads share a common neck, a distinctive iconographic type long associated with the civic coinage of Tenedos, evoking the island's mythological heritage. The field is plain, with no inscriptions on the obverse. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A double-headed axe (labrys), the primary symbol of Tenedos, depicted upright at the center of the field within an encircling laurel wreath. The ethnic legend ΤΕΝΕΔΙΩΝ arcs above the labrys in Greek characters. To the left of the axe handle appears a bunch of grapes, and to the right a wreath, both serving as secondary civic symbols. The composition is carefully balanced within the wreath border, reflecting the refined die-cutting style of late Hellenistic civic minting. |
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| Additional information |
Tenedos occupied a strategically suffocating position — a small island directly at the mouth of the Dardanelles, close enough to the Troad coast that no grain ship could pass without its awareness. That geography made the city-state commercially significant far beyond its size, and the tetradrachm series of this period reflects a civic authority still projecting independence even as Pergamene and then Roman power reshaped the Aegean. By the late second century, most smaller mints in the region had abandoned large silver altogether.
The Tenedian issues of this date range are among the last the city struck at tetradrachm weight before coinage production effectively ceased.