Barke was a Cyrenaican Greek colony founded around 560 BC, traditionally said to have been established by dissidents fleeing political turmoil in Cyrene. The city maintained enough independence to produce its own coinage, though it operated in the long shadow of its more powerful neighbor. Tetradrachms of this type are genuinely scarce — Barke never achieved the commercial volume of Cyrene, and the surviving die corpus is small.
The BMC Greek 49 reference places this among the better-documented specimens of a poorly-understood series.
Barke was a Cyrenaican Greek colony founded around 560 BC, traditionally said to have been established by dissidents fleeing political turmoil in Cyrene. The city maintained enough independence to produce its own coinage, though it operated in the long shadow of its more powerful neighbor. Tetradrachms of this type are genuinely scarce — Barke never achieved the commercial volume of Cyrene, and the surviving die corpus is small.
The BMC Greek 49 reference places this among the better-documented specimens of a poorly-understood series.