SOUTHERN LEVANT. Athenian-styled Imitations. Circa 420-405 BCE or slightly later. Šql = Tetradrachm (Silver, 25 mm, 16.54 g, 9 h). Head of Athena to right, wearing crested Attic helmet decorated with three olive leaves and palmette, circular earring and necklace; before, detached lock of hair of Athena in the form of a crescent; on cheek, countermark: 𐩫 (?) (K in South Arabian) within incuse square. Rev. Owl standing right, head facing; to left, olive sprig and crescent; to right, Α☉Ε; all within incuse square. Classical Numismatic Group MBS 78 (2008), 625 = Freeman & Sear MBS 14 (2007), 212 = Numismatica Ars Classica February Sale 2026, 487. Extremely rare and very unusual. Nicely toned and of lovely imitative style. Slightly rough, otherwise, good very fine.



L. Gentelli, G. Davis, F. Albarède, J. Blichert-Toff, and H. Gitler have shown in a newly published article that the majority of the supposedly local imitations of Athenian tetradrachms found in the Levant, and for that reason often attributed to Philistine workshops, are in fact official Athenian issues (When is an owl not an owl? An analysis of Attic tetradrachms circulating in the southern Levant in the late fifth and fourth centuries BCE, in: JAS Reports 70 (2026), pp. 1-11).

Although the present piece can hardly be assigned to Gaza, as proposed by UBS, it is nevertheless certainly not an official issue of Athens: it is difficult to imagine an Attic die-cutter rendering Athena’s lock of hair as a crescent detached from the head and floating freely in the field. That this was not an isolated mistake is shown by the comparison piece first offered by Freeman & Sear in 2007, which displays the same detached 'crescent' but was struck from a different pair of dies. Evidently, the die-cutter or die-cutters misunderstood Athena’s lock of hair as the crescent that regularly appears beside the owl on the reverse.

Where exactly these coins were produced remains unclear, but they are certainly of eastern, non-Athenian origin, most likely from the southern Levant. The countermark was interpreted by UBS as 𐡕 (T in Aramaic), though 𐩫 (K in South Arabian) is also conceivable. In any case, the countermark does not prove the coin’s place of manufacture, but rather points to its later circulation or use.