Tetradrachm - Antiochos VIII Grypos Ake-Ptolemais

Antiochos VIII earned the epithet "Grypos" — hook-nosed — from his contemporaries, a rare instance of a reigning monarch being openly mocked by nickname during his own lifetime. His reign was consumed by a protracted civil war against his half-brother Antiochos IX Kyzikenos, fought intermittently from around 113 BC until Grypos was assassinated in 96 BC, reportedly poisoned by his own minister Herakleon. Ake-Ptolemais, the Phoenician coastal mint that produced this issue, had passed through Ptolemaic and then Seleucid hands and retained commercial importance precisely because of its Mediterranean port access.

SC2 2336 places this emission within a well-documented sequence from that mint, distinguishable by control marks from other Grypos tetradrachm issues struck at Antioch or Damascus during the same fractured reign.