Æ Trishekel

Utica, one of the oldest Phoenician foundations on the North African coast and a city that predated Carthage by centuries according to ancient tradition, maintained its own civic bronze coinage into the second century BC — a period when Carthaginian power had been catastrophically reduced by Rome following the Second Punic War. This issue falls squarely within that uneasy interval between Zama and the Third Punic War, when Utica's political relationship with Rome was considerably warmer than Carthage's own.

The trishekel denomination follows Punic weight standards rather than Roman ones — a quiet assertion of commercial identity in a city navigating two worlds.