Trihemiobol

Knidos occupied a strategically awkward position at the tip of the Carian peninsula, and its early coinage reflects the city's orientation toward Aegean trade rather than inland Anatolia. The trihemiobol denomination — three half-obols — was a genuinely practical unit for small commercial transactions in port economies where fractional silver moved constantly between sailors, merchants, and harbor traders.

Cahn's die study remains the authoritative reference for archaic Knidian issues, and the specimen numbers cited here place this piece firmly in the earliest phase of the city's coinage, predating the Persian administrative pressures that would later reshape mint output along the coast.