The Coinage of Carthage

Sale: Triton XIII, Lot: 79. Estimate $3000.  Closing Date: Monday, 4 January 2010.  Sold For $3300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CARTHAGE. Circa 290-270 BC. EL Stater (7.32 g, 12h). Head of Tanit left, wearing wreath of grain ears, triple-pendant earring, and necklace / Horse standing right. Jenkins & Lewis group VII, 347 (same dies); MAA 13; SNG Copenhagen 988; Boston MFA 503; Jameson 924. Good VF, toned, hairline flan crack.

By the third century BC, the Punic goddess Tanit and the horse had become the standard types of Carthaginian coinage and remained so for the balance of the city’s existence. Tanit was the primary deity of Carthage. A celestial divinity with some fertility aspects, she was the North African equivalent of Astarte. She is always depicted on the coinage wearing a wreath of grain which may have been borrowed from Demeter and Persephone as the Carthaginians assimilated the Sicilian culture into their own during the various Punic excursions to the island. The use of the horse on the reverse is usually considered part of the foundation myth of Carthage. According to Virgil's Aeneid, the Phoenician colonists who founded Carthage were told by Juno (or Tanit) to establish the new colony at the place where they discovered a horse's head in the ground. An alternate theory is that the obverse head is actually Demeter or Persephone, whose worship was introduced to Carthage in 396 BC to make amends for the destruction of the goddesses' temples outside Syracuse by the Carthaginian army.

Carthage began issuing a gold coinage in the 4th century BC, apparently to finance the expansion of their trading empire into Sicily. The quality of the gold dropped over time, and by the late 4th century, the series was entirely of electrum. As most of the Carthaginian silver was struck at local mints in their occupied cities in Sicily, very little silver was issued at Carthage. However, a robust bronze coinage of multiple denominations was issued alongside the gold and electrum coinage, reflecting the flourishing local economy. The conflicts with the Greeks in Sicily continued into the 3rd century BC, at which time Carthage also became embroiled in conflict with the new power in the region, Rome. This conflict led to three major wars which continued to put great pressure on the Carthaginian economy, and the degradation in the metal quality during the earlier wars continued into this period, with the golden-yellow of the electrum eventually turing into a near white-yellow. Silver denominations were also issued more often during this latter period, but also were degraded into a billon coinage. Ultimately, these issues came to an end with the destruction of Carthage at the hands of the Romans at the conclusion of the Third Punic War in 146 BC.