Sale: CNG 60, Lot: 758. Estimate $500.  Closing Date: Wednesday, 22 May 2002.  Sold For $500. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

IONIA, Persian Satraps. Ephesos(?). Circa 350-340 BC. Æ 13mm (2.15 gm). Persian king kneeling right, holding bow in left hand, spear in right; BA behind; C/M: star / Incuse relief map of the hinterland of Ephesos(?). A.E.M. Johnston, "The Earliest Preserved Greek Map: A New Ionian Coin Type," JHS (1967), 1-4 (only four specimens listed, three in Berlin and one in London); Imhoof-Blumer, Kleinasiatische Münzen pl. 18, 22; BMC Ionia pg. 324, 7. Nice VF, glossy brown patina, possibly overstruck. Very rare. ($500)

Particularly interesting is the reverse design depicting what Johnston has interpreted as a relief map of the hinterland of Ephesos, which if it is, would have been very useful to the Persians prior to Alexander's conquests and would also be the earliest Greek map and first physical relief map known. On the right (north) are the mountains Tmolos and Messogis between the river valleys of the Caÿster and Maeander, to the left of which are three mountain ridges (Madranbaba Dagi, Karincali Dagi, and Akaba Tepesi). Johnston follows Six in suggesting that the coins were probably struck under the Persian general Memnon at Ephesos, circa 336-334 BC, in order to pay his army after he had captured the city, but before his defeat by Alexander at the Battle of Granicus in 334. However, this theory is still debated and doubted by some scholars, most recently by Leo Mildenberg.