MYSIA. Kyzikos. Circa 450-330 BC. Stater (Electrum, 18 mm, 16.07 g, 12 h). Two eagles, wings closed, standing facing each other on a filleted omphalos; below, tunny to right. Rev. Quadripartite incuse square. BMC 100. Boston MFA 1535 = Warren 1440. Gulbenkian 643. Jameson 1423. SNG Paris 348. Von Fritze I, 220 and pl. VI, 32. Rare and very likely the finest known example. A wonderful piece, perfectly centered and with an exceptional rendering of the famous Delphic omphalos myth. Extremely fine.


Few Kyzikene types translate a myth into numismatic imagery as vividly as this extraordinary composition. According to the Delphic tradition, Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the world, one from the east and one from the west; where they met at Delphi lay the center of the inhabited earth. The spot was marked by the omphalos, the 'navel' of the world. Strabo (IX.3.6) describes the sacred stone in the temple as adorned with fillets and bearing representations of the two birds of the myth, an account strikingly close to the image preserved on the present coin.

The omphalos itself is shown wrapped in the characteristic agrenon, the woolen net associated with the Delphic cult stone. A remarkable archaeological parallel survives in the marble omphalos now in the Archaeological Museum at Delphi, dated to about 330-325 BC. Its surface reproduces the agrenon in carved relief and bears a striking formal resemblance to the Kyzikene representation. The coin thus preserves an especially vivid numismatic rendering of an image that remained central to Delphic sacred iconography.

At Kyzikos, however, the subject may have carried an additional meaning. The tunny beneath the omphalos unmistakably appropriates the image for the issuing city, and it has been suggested that Kyzikos was presenting itself as an omphalos in its own right. Later authors indeed describe the city in precisely such terms. Situated between Europe and Asia and between the Aegean and Black Sea worlds, Kyzikos occupied an exceptional position at the crossroads of ancient commerce. The type may therefore do more than invoke Delphi: it may adapt one of the most famous images of Greek sacred geography into a statement about Kyzikos itself.