Tetradrachm - Antiochos VIII Ake-Ptolemais

Antiochos VIII — nicknamed Grypos, "hook-nose" — seized the Seleucid throne after orchestrating the poisoning of his mother Laodike IV, who had herself just poisoned his half-brother Seleukos V. The mint at Ake-Ptolemais, a Phoenician port city with a long history of switching allegiances, was one of several western mints Grypos activated to fund his prolonged civil war against his half-brother Antiochos IX Kyzikenos, a conflict that would consume the last decades of Seleucid coherence as a functioning state.