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Research Coins: Electronic Auction

 
222, Lot: 141. Estimate $75.
Sold for $100. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ATTICA, Athens. Circa 322/17-307 BC. Æ Dichalkon (14mm, 2.26 g, 12h). Eleusinian festival coinage. Triptolemos, holding grain ears, seated left in winged chariot drawn by two snakes / Piglet standing right on mystic staff; EΛEY in exergue, all within wheat wreath. Kroll 49; SNG Copenhagen 423. Fine, brown patina.


From the J.P. Righetti Collection, 10488.

The obverse is inspired by a statue of Triptolemos that was presumably still in its temple when Pausanias (I. 38, 6) visited Eleusis in about AD 160: “The Eleusians have a temple to Triptolemos... They say that the plain called Rharion was the first to be sown and the first to grow crops... Here is shown a threshing floor and altar. My dream forbade the description of the things within the wall of the sanctuary, and the uninitiated are of course not permitted to learn that which they are prevented from seeing.”