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Auction: 312 - Numismatic Collector's Series Sale
Lot: 1115

Paphlagonia, Sinope (ca. 330-300 BC), AR Tetradrachm, Attic standard, 15.62gms, head of the city-goddess right, wearing mural crown, rev. INEN, Apollo seated right on omphalos, holding lyre and plektron, A-M-T in right field, small countermark "M" above the "T" (cf.SNG v. Aulock 6861),lightly toned over some old pinscratches in field, overall a decent example of a very rare and important issue of Sinope seldom offered in public sale, very fine. Originally a Hittite port, Sinope became the wealthiest emporium on the southern Euxine coast. Between 780 and 756 BC, Milesian Greeks founded a settlement there, while the area came under Phrygian contol in 700 BC. Sinope was laid waste by the Cimmerians in 677 BC, only to be refounded as a Milesian colony in ca. 630 BC. It later came under the yoke of the Persian empire. Following the defeat of the Persians at the hands of Alexander the Great, the Macedonian ruler told Sinope´s ambassador that the city should keep its old independence. After Alexander´s death, Sinope was able to remain independent both of the Seleukids and the Pontic kings. Syrian influence, though, was clear and this tetradrachm emulates Seleukid types of Antiochos III, albeit in distinctive Sinopan fashion. The obverse depicts Sinope, daughter of Asopus, who, according to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, bore Apollo (depicted on the reverse) a son, Syrus, the eponymous first king of the Syrians.

Sold for
$1,900