Sale: Triton VII, Lot: 151. Estimate $20000.  Closing Date: Monday, 12 January 2004.  Sold For $42000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

TAURIC CHERSONESOS. Pantikapaion. Circa 340 BC. AV Stater (9.08 gm). Bearded head of Pan left, wearing wreath of ivy leaves / P-A-N, griffin standing left on stalk of wheat, head facing, holding spear in mouth. SNG BM Black Sea 867; SNG Stancomb 547; BMC Thrace pg. 4, 4; SNG Copenhagen 20; Gulbenkian 588; Weber 2690; SNG Lockett 1095. Lustrous EF, nicely centered. [See color enlargement on plate 3] ($20,000)

Pantikapaion was founded by Greek colonists from Miletos in the late 7th century BC. Situated on the west side of the Cimmerian Bosporos, in what is now the Crimea, it achieved great prosperity through its exploitation of the abundant fisheries of the Straits and the export of wheat from the Crimea. This wealth is attested by its splendid gold coinage which commenced in the mid-4th century BC and by the magnificently furnished rock tombs of its principal citizens in the same period. Later, it was to become a regional capital of the kingdom of Mithradates VI of Pontos (120-63 BC) and later still the seat of the kings of Bosporos (1st century BC — 4th century AD).

The coinage of Pantikapaion seems to have commenced with silver issues in the latter part of the 5th century BC, but it is for its beautiful gold staters that the mint is chiefly noted. They depict the head of the god Pan (a pun on the name of the city) and on the reverse the griffin which Herodotos describes as being the guardian of the remote sources of gold.