PHILISTIA. Central Mint. Athenian-styled, circa 420-350 BCE. Rbʾ Šql = Drachm (Silver, 14 mm, 2.78 g, 10 h). Head of Athena to right, wearing crested Attic helmet decorated with three olive leaves and palmette. Rev. Winged and horned lion-griffin seated to right within cable-pattern border within incuse square. Gitler & Tal XIII.15Da (this coin). Hendin -. Jeselsohn 223 (same reverse die). Shoshana -. Sofaer -. Of the highest rarity, one of just two known examples. Beautifully toned and with a highly interesting reverse. The obverse struck slightly off center and with considerable edge filing, otherwise, very fine.



When Gitler and Tal published their important corpus of Philistine coinage in 2006, only the present specimen of this remarkable type was known to them. With the publication of the first volume of the highly significant Jeselsohn Collection in 2024, a second example has now come to light, struck from the same reverse die. The animal is described there as a 'lion or lynx', but may perhaps be more precisely understood as a lion-griffin, a type of composite creature especially familiar from Achaemenid imperial art (see also lots 115-116 below). Comparable representations are found, for example, on the famous griffin friezes from the palace of Darius I at Susa, now in the Louvre, as well as on gold objects from the Oxus Treasure, such as BM 123929.