IONIA. Lebedos. Circa 150-143/2 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 33 mm, 14.98 g, 12 h), Apollodotos, magistrate. Head of Athena to right, wearing triple-crested Attic helmet decorated with a laurel branch above the visor, and a drop earring in the form of a miniature Nike.
Rev. ΛEBEΔIΩN / AΠΟΛΛΟ-ΔΟΤΟΣ Small owl standing right on club, head facing, between two filleted cornucopiae conjoined at their ends; all within laurel wreath. Amandry, Lebedos, Group IV, - (D7/R-; obverse die not listed for magistrate; unlisted reverse die). BMC 1. Boston MFA 170. Lightly toned and of beautiful Hellenistic style. Slightly rough and with a thin surface crack on the obverse
, otherwise, extremely fine.
From a European collection, formed before 2005.
Lebedos was a minor city situated on the Ionian coast between Teos and Ephesos. Its impressive stephanophoric coinage features Athena in monumental style on the obverse, and her sacred bird, the owl, flanked by two cornucopiae on the reverse. Amandry dated most of the Lebedean tetradrachms to circa 150-143/2 BC, based on the few examples found in the 1972 Kirikhan Hoard, whose latest coin - a Seleukid tetradrachm - dated to 143/2 and showed little to no wear. Compared to more prolific mints such as Kyme or Myrina, the scale of Lebedean stephanophoric coinage must have been very small: out of more than 5,000 silver coins in the Kirikhan Hoard, mostly tetradrachms, only 35 were stephanophoroi from Lebedos.
