Sale: Triton IX, Lot: 901. Estimate $10000.  Closing Date: Monday, 9 January 2006.  Sold For $17000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

MYSIA, Lampsakos. Circa 370 BC. AV Stater (8.35 g, 2h). Persic standard. Half length figure of Demeter Chthonia, wearing girdled chiton and himation, rising left from earth, holding three ears of grain; behind left shoulder, two ears of grain and vine bearing two bunches of grapes / Forepart of winged horse right with curved wing. Baldwin, Lampsakos 25b = Weber 5096 (this coin); SNG France -; SNG Copenhagen -; Traité II 2533, pl. CLXX, 32 = BMC 26 (same obv. die); SNG von Aulock -; Boston MFA -. Good VF. Extremely rare, only two known specimens, this being the sole example in private hands. ($10,000)

Ex Triton VI (14 January 2003), lot 314; Charles Gillet Collection; Sir Herman Weber Collection, 5096.

Lampsakos depended upon the traffic between the Aegean and the Black Sea, and possessed an excellent harbour in a strategic position guarding the eastern entrance to the Hellespont opposite Gallipolis. The city was known to have existed under the name of Pityusa before it received colonists from the Ionian cities of Phocaea and Miletus (Strabo xiii, p. 589). In the sixth and fifth centuries Lampsakos passed successively under Lydian, Persian, Athenian, and Spartan control. Its tribute of twelve talents, as a member of the Delian League, and production of electrum staters in the fifth century, attest to its commercial wealth. Following the example and standard of the Persic daric, Lampsakos was the first Greek city to make regular issues of gold coinage, which enjoyed an international circulation from Sicily to the Black Sea. As at Kyzikos, the quality of engraving was very high, and types changed frequently: about forty types were produced in a period of about sixty years, one of the most interesting of which is the highly original rendering of Demeter Chthonia rising from the ground (not Gaia, the personification of cosmic Earth, as previously identified, pace Agnes Baldwin). Chthonic deities were those whose powers came from the earth. Demeter, as celebrated in the Eleusinian Mysteries, was an earth-goddess who symbolized the annual cycle of death and rebirth in nature, especially the grain harvest. Dionysos, who was also venerated in the mysteries, is referred to by the grape bunches behind Demeter.