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Tetradrachm Unfaithful Legend Type
| Issuer | Uncertain Eastern European Celts |
|---|---|
| Year | 300 BC - 201 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 13.69 g |
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| Obverse description | Celticized laureate head of Zeus facing left, rendered in the characteristic stylized barbarous manner derived from Macedonian prototypes of Philip II. The facial features are boldly abstracted, with a large prominent eye, exaggerated brow, and a flowing beard indicated by incised lines. The laureate wreath encircling the head is rendered as a series of elongated leaf forms with pronounced Celtic artistic interpretation. The flan is irregular and slightly convex, with no legend present on the obverse. |
|---|---|
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Celtic coinage in the eastern Balkans descended from Macedonian prototypes — Philip II tetradrachms copied so persistently that the designs degraded through successive generations of imitation into near-abstraction. The "Unfaithful Legend" designation refers specifically to the garbled or pseudo-epigraphic inscription derived from Philip's original ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΥ, rendered by celts who had no literacy in Greek into sequences of meaningless strokes and curves.
Attribution to a specific tribal group remains impossible. The Kostial reference places it within a broad Danubian tradition, but the actual striking location could fall anywhere across a wide arc from Thrace to the Carpathian basin.