Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Tetradrachm In the name of Alexander III
| Issuer | Sinope (Paphlagonia) |
|---|---|
| Year | 230 BC - 200 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Hammered |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Zeus Aëtophoros enthroned in left profile, nude to the waist with a himation draped over his lower body and legs, seated on a high-backed throne with a footstool beneath his feet. In his extended right hand he holds an eagle facing left, and in his raised left hand he grasps a long sceptre. The Greek legend ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ is inscribed vertically in the left field, with the mint abbreviation ΣΙ below, identifying the issuing city of Sinope. A control symbol appears in the right field. The composition follows the canonical Lysippan prototype established for Alexander III coinage. |
| Reverse script | Greek |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Log in to see details |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Sinope's adoption of the Alexander-type tetradrachm decades after the conqueror's death reflects the city's shifting political allegiances during the Wars of the Diadochi and their aftermath. By the early third century, posthumous Alexander coinage had become essentially an international trade currency across the Black Sea littoral, and Sinope — already one of the most commercially active ports on the Pontic coast — issued under that convention rather than in its own civic types.
The Mektepini reference places this among a group attributed through die studies specific to the Sinopean mint. Control marks distinguishing local issues from the broader posthumous Alexander series are the primary basis for that attribution.