CARIA. Kaunos. Circa 410-390 BC. Stater (Silver, 21 mm, 11.63 g, 9 h). Winged female figure in kneeling-running stance left, head to right, holding kerykeion in her right hand and wreath in her left. Rev. Baitylos between 𐊼 - Γ ('kb' in Carian); all within incuse square. Konuk 101 (O42/R42). SNG von Aulock 2349 (same dies). A very well centered and beautifully toned example. The surfaces very slightly granular, otherwise, good very fine.


The dramatic progress in the decipherment of the Carian alphabet and first steps in the understanding of the Carian language since the 1980s solved one of the oldest numismatic mysteries of southwestern Asia Minor: the attribution of the so-called 'winged Carians', a series of staters and fractions showing a winged female figure on the obverse and a baitylos on the reverse. Previous scholars were unable to read the ethnic, but thanks to the breakthrough in the decipherment of the Carian alphabet initiated by J. D. Ray in 1981 and further developed by D. Schürr and I. Adiego in the 1990s, we now know that 𐊼Γ and the later form 𐊼Γ𐊜 translate as 'kb' and 'kbn' respectively: this is, as K. Konuk pointed out, the indigenous ethnic of Kaunos, which is recorded in Carian ('Kbid-') in the Greek-Carian bilingual inscription of Kaunos (C.Ka 5) and - in the form of the Carian loanword 'Xbide' - in the Lycian section of the Letoon trilingual ('Xñtawati Xbidẽñni' = 'the basileus of Kaunos').