Tetradrachm turtle/rose

Kyzikos sat at the mouth of the Propontis and used that position ruthlessly — the city controlled transit between the Aegean and Black Sea for centuries, extracting tolls and maintaining an aggressively independent mint even as Macedonian power swept through the region. The electrum staters of Kyzikos had long served as the hard currency of the northern Aegean grain trade, but by the late fourth century that coinage was giving way to silver as Alexander's Persian hoard flooded the Mediterranean economy.

This tetradrachm belongs to a transitional phase, minted as the city negotiated its relationship with the Macedonian successor states following Alexander's campaigns. The Bement collection reference dates to one of the great early dispersals of Greek coinage scholarship; Lampson's numbering places this among a tightly catalogued sequence.