Tetradrachm

Kyrene's silver coinage emerged directly from its role as the ancient world's dominant source of silphium, the now-extinct plant whose export made the city one of the wealthiest in North Africa. The Battiad dynasty, which ruled Kyrene through this period, controlled silphium as a near-monopoly commodity — Roman sources later priced it by weight against silver. These tetradrachms were almost certainly instruments of that trade.

The Aiginetan weight standard used here, rather than the Attic, reflects Kyrene's commercial alignment with the Peloponnese and Aegean rather than Athens.