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Tetradrachm
| Issuer | Kyrene |
|---|---|
| Year | 550 BC - 500 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 16.70 g |
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| Obverse description | Cruciform design composed of two pairs of parallel lines forming a cross, with a Herakles knot (nodus Herculanus) at the central intersection. The vertical arms terminate in a single horizontal bar at each end, while the horizontal arms each culminate in a stylized silphium fruit, the emblematic plant of Kyrene. In each of the four quadrants formed by the cross, an additional silphium fruit is depicted in low relief. The composition is rendered in the archaic Greek style, with bold, schematic forms characteristic of early Kyrenean coinage. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Two side-by-side incuse rectangles deeply struck into the flan, each exhibiting a rough, irregular surface texture consistent with early archaic hammered coinage technique. The incuse fields display no inscriptions or figural devices, presenting a purely geometric, abstract reverse typical of the earliest issues of Kyrene prior to the adoption of more elaborate reverse types. The sharp, recessed borders of the rectangles contrast with the surrounding flat field. |
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| Additional information |
Kyrene's early silver coinage was among the first struck in North Africa, issued by a Greek colonial city whose economy was built almost entirely on the export of silphium — a plant so commercially dominant that it appeared on the city's coins and was, by the classical period, effectively worth its weight in silver. The plant was harvested from a restricted zone in the Libyan hinterland under state control, with export revenues funding both civic infrastructure and, almost certainly, this coinage itself.
The silphium trade collapsed entirely by the first century AD, the plant harvested to extinction.