Graceful and Artistic

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 342. Estimate $5000.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $18000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

CARIA, Uncertain. Circa 480-460 BC. AR Stater (11.67 g, 4h). Mint B. Winged male figure, nude, with winged heels, in kneeling stance right; Carian monogram over right wing / Lion standing left, head right, raising right forepaw; Carian letters and monogram above; all within incuse square. Troxell, Winged 41; E.S.G. Robinson, “A Find of Archaic Coins from South-west Asia Minor,” NC 1936, 10; Rosen 624 var. (letters); K. Schefold, Meisterwerke griechischer Kunst (Basel/Stuttgart, 1960), 448 (this coin). Good VF, toned, light scratch in field on obverse under tone. Struck from dies of exceptional style. Rare.

Ex Münzen und Medaillen 88 (17 May 1999), lot 236; 1932 Caria Hoard (IGCH 1180).

Very little is known about early Carian coinage (prior to 400 BC), and the extant examples are primarily limited to those found in the 1932 Caria Hoard (IGCH 1180). In her article, “Winged Carians”, H. Troxell was able to reconstruct a picture of two mints and developed a rough chronology of their issues. Those issues she placed at Mint A have now been attributed to Kaunos (see K. Konuk, “The Early Coinage of Kaunos” in Essays Price). Attributing a city to mint B has been more problematic, but the monogram appearing on almost all of these coins has been speculated to represent the Carian letters o-u, perhaps indicating a mint at the small town of Ouliaes. Of particular note among the issues of mint B, the staters Troxell places during period II, in which the present coin belongs, have additional letters that are probably the names of local dynasts. The iconography of the coins is also unclear, but lions are a very common element among all Carian coinage.