Lot 14
Siculo-Punic. Machanat series, c. 330-325 BC. AR Tetradrachm (17.23 g). Diademed head of Arethusa-Persephone-Tanit left, hair wreathed in grains, with necklace and ornate pendant earring. Reverse: Horse prancing to right, before date palm. Jenkins 126; Gulbenkian 363. In high relief and handsomely toned. Among the prettiest and most charming die pairings in the Siculo-Punic series; the elegant head is a worthy recreation of Euainetos' decadrachm showing Arethusa. NGC graded About Uncirculated.
By about the 1000 BC, the country of Phoenicia, which had become a dominant mercantile power in the eastern Mediterranean in the previous two centuries, was establishing permanent trading communities in the western Mediterranean -- in Spain, in Cyprus, on Malta, and what would become their greatest colony, Carthage, in north Africa, and along the north and west coasts of Sicily. Within two centuries colonists from Greece were likewise settling throughout the rest of the island. For the next several hundred years the island would suffer the periodic warfare and depredations of these two ethnic entities struggling for commercial dominance of the fertile and rich island. This is particularly so after 450 BC, when Phoenicia's influence and power was on the wane and that of the younger, more assertive, Carthage on a rapid rise.
Estimated Value $6,000 - 7,000.
Ex M. Ley collection, Lanz 70, November 21, 1994, no. 30.
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| Realized $31,050 |
