Sale: Triton VI, Lot: 443. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Monday, 13 January 2003.  Sold For $13000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CYPRUS, Salamis. Nikokreon. Circa 331-311/10 BC. AV Stater (8.29 gm). Persic standard. Draped bust of Aphrodite left, hair rolled above forehead and falling in long wavy strands to front and back of shoulder, wearing beaded necklace, triple-drop earring, and turreted crown, NI behind / Draped bust of Aphrodite left, hair in tight ringlets falling before ear and down back of neck, wearing torque (open end at front of her neck), beaded hoop earring, fillet, and crown decorated with semicircular plates; BA behind. McGregor 804 = Traité II 1188, pl. 129, 10, (same dies). EF. (See color enlargement on plate 1.) ($10,000) 

Nikokreon succeeded Pnytagoras on the throne of Salamis and is reported to have paid homage to Alexander after the conqueror’s return from Egypt to Tyre in 331. In the war between Antigonos and Ptolemy (315), Nikokreon supported the latter and was rewarded by being placed in control of all Cyprus. Nikokreon’s gold staters, continuing in the tradition established by Pnytagoras, feature busts of Cypriote Aphrodite in her various forms, as celebrated by her numerous cult centers on the island. Her turreted crown on the obverse of this coin shows her assimilation to Tyche as protecting civic goddess for the whole of Cyprus.Kaelyn Ann McGregor has catalogued all five previously known examples of Nikokreon’s gold staters in her unpublished doctoral thesis, The Coinage of Salamis, Cyprus, From the Sixth to the Fourth Centuries B.C. (Institute of Archaeology, University College, London, 1999). The five published specimens, with McGregor catalogue numbers (and die combinations) are as follows:1. McGregor 802 (O1/R1). Gulbenkian 814; Jameson 2606.2. McGregor 803 (O1/R2). Bibliothèque Royale Albert I, Brussels; Hoffmann, 29 June 1881; Bayle sale, 1 May 1881; Hirsch Collection; Naster, p. 270, no. 1617, pl. LXXXVI; Destrooper-Georgiades 1990, p. 15, no. 9.3. McGregor 803a (O1/R2). Boston Museum of Fine Arts 2340; M&M Basel VIII, Dec. 1949, 857.4. McGregor 804 (O2/R2). Bibliothèque Nationale (de Luynes Collection); Six 1883, p. 297, no. 48; Traité II 1188, pl.cxxix, 10.5. McGregor 805 (O3/R3). Berlin (C.R. Fox Collection); von Sallet, p. 132, pl. V, 6; Six 1883, p. 297, no. 49.1; BMC p. cxiii, pl. XXIV, 21; Traité II 1188 bis, pl.cxxix, 11.The present specimen, from the same dies as McGregor 804, is apparently the only gold stater of Nikokreon in private ownership.