Fourth Known: Alexander Riding Boukephalos

CNG 94, Lot: 725. Estimate $30000. Sold for $55000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUKID KINGS of SYRIA. Seleukos I Nikator. 312-281 BC. AR Tetradrachm (24mm, 17.09 g, 7h). Ekbatana mint. Struck circa 295 BC. Head of Herakles right, wearing lion skin / BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΣEΛEY[KOY] in exergue, Alexander the Great, with Dionysiac attributes, wearing helmet adorned with bull’s ear and horns, panther skin on shoulders, riding Boukephalos right; across lower field, from left to right, ΣΩ and two monograms. SC 203 = A. Houghton and A. Stewart, “The equestrian portrait of Alexander the Great on a new tetradrachm of Seleukos I” in SNR 78 (1999), pp. 27–35; Nomos I, lot 119; HGC 9, 24. Good VF, toned, a few light marks under tone. Extremely rare, the 4th known example.

This extraordinary coin comes from a series that also includes some very rare drachms and hemidrachms of the same type. The identification of the figure on the reverse is controversial: is it Dionysos the Conqueror? Is it Alexander with attributes of Dionysos? Is it Seleukos with attributes of Alexander and Dionysos? Or is it a general hero with attributes of all of them? Houghton and Stewart made a very good case for it being Alexander, based on the Dionysiac symbolism used for the portrait of Alexander on the victory coinage struck in Susa ten years earlier. On this coin we can see that the saddle cloth is an animal skin (the tail can be made out waving behind the rider); presumably that of a panther. The horns of the horse immediately recall Alexander’s mount, the famous Boukephalos, thus, seemingly making the identification of the rider certain. Since the publication of 1999, however, Houghton seems to have had second thoughts, and wonders that the rider may well be Seleukos. This is unlikely. The fact that this issue was so limited in size argues against it being the introduction of a new iconographic representation of Seleukos, rather than a reprise of that of Alexander. After all, if it was meant to be Seleukos, why is it never used again? The suggestion that the horned horse is not Alexander’s mount, but the swift horse that carried Seleukos away from Babylon in 315 BC, is equally unlikely because that horse is never said to have had horns and the fact that horned horse heads are often found on some eastern silver and bronze coins of Seleukos I and a few of his successors does not support that attribution. Those heads are surely of Boukephalos, especially since he died and was buried in the east. Clearly, the horseman on this coin is Alexander, conqueror of the East, in a pose very similar to that found on the so-called Poros Dekadrachms. He appears on this special issue for the same reasons he appeared on the series from Susa: to recall the deeds of Alexander in the past and associate them with those of Seleukos in the present. This is not only one of the most exciting and historically significant coins minted by the Seleukids, but it also a particularly striking depiction of Alexander.