MYSIA. Kyzikos. Circa 450-330 BC. Stater (Electrum, 20 mm, 16.07 g, 12 h). Head of Zeus-Ammon to right, with ram's horn and ear; below, tunny to right. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. BMC 55. Boston MFA 1520 = Warren 1423. Gulbenkian 640. SNG Paris 281. Von Fritze I, 130 and pl. IV, 16. Very rare. The obverse struck slightly off center and with minor doubling, otherwise, good very fine.


The head of Zeus-Ammon on this very rare Kyzikene stater is derived from the coinage of Kyrene, where the bearded god with the ram’s horn curled around his ear had already become a characteristic civic type by the mid-fifth century BC. Kyrenaic tetradrachms of circa 480–435 BC provide the model for the right-facing portrait adopted at Kyzikos. As elsewhere in the extraordinarily eclectic electrum series, Kyzikos appropriated a distinctive foreign coin type and incorporated it into its own monetary language through the addition of the tunny, the city’s civic badge. The unusual ram’s ear of the Kyzikene rendering appears to be a local elaboration of the otherwise unmistakably Kyrenaic Zeus-Ammon type.