The Rare and Popular Gold Stater of the Pharaoh Nektanebo II

Triton XIX, Lot: 2075. Estimate $50000. Sold for $130000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

EGYPT, Pharonic Kingdom. Nektanebo II. 361-343 BC. AV Stater (16.5mm, 8.16 g, 10h). Horse prancing right / Heiroglyphic representation of “good gold”: pectoral necklace (nebew = “gold”) crossing horizontally over a windpipe and heart (nefer = “good”). FF-BD 1p (D1/R1 – this coin); SNG Berry 1459 (same dies); SNG Copenhagen 1 (same obv. die); ACGC 1064 (same obv. die); Hunt I 106 (same dies); Jameson 2618 (same rev. die). Good VF, toned, slightly off center on reverse. Rare.

From the collection of Dr. Lawrence A. Adams. Ex Stack’s (10 June 1997), lot 38; Berk BBS 83 (26 October 1994), lot 7B; Münzhandlung Basel 10 (16 March 1938), lot 402.

One of the great (and very popular) rarities for ancient gold coinage collectors is the gold stater (or daric?) issued by the Egyptian Pharaoh Nektanebo II. The authors of the die study cited above could account for only 42 examples struck from 3 obverse and 3 reverse dies with 5 die combinations. They also listed 5 examples from the Mit Rahineh hoard (IGCH 1658) that they could not examine for their die study. The attribution to Nektanebo II is not infallible, and is based primarily on circumstantial historical evidence and not the coins themselves, which do not bear any specific ethnic or monogram.

Nekht-har-hebi, or Nektanebo II as he was known to the Greeks, was the nephew of the Pharaoh Tachos (Djedhor). Placed in command of the Egyptian army in Syria during the Satrapal Revolt, he turned his troops against his own king, and uncle, and took Egypt by force. In 351-350 BC, he repelled a Persian invasion but was driven from his throne in 344-343 by a second assault. He then fled Egypt and found refuge in Ethiopia and retained control of Upper Egypt for another few years.

Nektanebo most likely would have issued his gold staters to pay the mercenaries in his army. What makes the coinage of Nektanebo stand out, though, is an Egyptian cultural revival for the coin’s obverse and reverse types instead of imitating the Athenian tetradrachm types previously used in Egypt by the Greeks and Persians. As such, this is the only known coinage to employ a hieroglyph – a purely Egyptian coin.