Extremely Rare ‘Horned Horse’ Type of Antiochos I Soter

CNG 99, Lot: 325. Estimate $10000. Sold for $9000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUKID KINGS of SYRIA. Antiochos I Soter. 281-261 BC. AR Tetradrachm (27mm, 15.58 g, 6h). Aï Khanoum mint. Diademed head with idealized features right / BΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ to left, ANTIOXOY below, horned and bridled horse head right with horn-like forelock; ΔI to right. SC Ad102 (this coin referenced); SCB –; HGC 9, 132. Good VF, toned, minor surface roughness. Extremely rare, and the only published specimen of this issue.

Ex New York Sale IV (17 January 2002), lot 240.

The authors of Seleucid Coins (Pt. I, Vol. I, p. 114), following Babelon and Newell, suggest that this horse represents not Alexander’s steed, Bukephalos, but Seleukos I’s horse that in 315 BC carried him from Babylon to Egypt, where he found asylum with Ptolemy I.

Seleukos bestowed extraordinary honors on this animal, including deification and a gilt statue at Antioch, which depicted the horse’s head, a helmet, and a dedicatory inscription. Most likely, Seleukos chose this type to honor both his own horse and the legacy of Bukephalos–an obvious link to the legacy of Alexander the Great that was always first and foremost in the minds of the Diadochoi.