CARTHAGE. Circa 270-264 BC. AV 1½ Shekels – Tridrachm (22mm, 12.47 g, 12h). Carthage mint. NGC AU, 5/5, 3/5, Fine Style, brushed.

CNG Feature Auction 132
Lot: 180.
Closing Date: May 19 2026 11:00 ET

Greek, 12h, Gold

Estimate: $ 30 000

BID NOW

CARTHAGE. Circa 270-264 BC. AV 1½ Shekels – Tridrachm (22mm, 12.47 g, 12h). Carthage mint. Head of Tanit left, wearing wreath of grain ears, triple-pendant earring, and necklace with eleven pendants / Horse standing right, head left. Jenkins & Lewis Group IX, 389 (same dies); CNP 76d; MAA 26; SNG Copenhagen 181; Basel 569; Gulbenkian 384; Kraay & Hirmer 210; de Luynes 3749 (same obv. die). In NGC encapsulation 8559712-001, graded AU, Strike: 5/5, Surface: 3/5, Fine Style, brushed.

Purchased by the consignor from Shanna Schmidt. Ex Peus 435 (31 October 2023), lot 177; Numismatica Ars Classica 125 (23 June 2021), lot 296. Reportedly previously purchased from Freeman & Sear and ex Tunis Hoard of 1948 (ICGH 2271).

By the third century BC, the Punic goddess Tanit and the horse had become the standard types of Carthaginian coinage and remained so for the balance of the city’s existence. Tanit was the primary deity of Carthage. A celestial divinity with some fertility aspects, she was the North African equivalent of Astarte. She is always depicted on the coinage wearing a wreath of grain, which may have been borrowed from Demeter and Persephone as the Carthaginians assimilated the Sicilian culture into their own during the various Punic excursions to the island. The use of the horse on the reverse is usually considered part of the foundation myth of Carthage. According to Virgil's Aeneid, the Phoenician colonists who founded Carthage were told by Juno (or Tanit) to establish the new colony at the place where they discovered a horse's head in the ground. Another theory is that the obverse head is actually Demeter or Persephone, whose worship was introduced to Carthage in 396 BC to make amends for the destruction of the goddesses' temples outside Syracuse by the Carthaginian army.

The final winners of all CNG Feature Auction 132 lots will be determined at the live online sale that will be held on 18-19 May 2026.

CNG Feature Auction 132 – Session One – Lot 1-318 will be held Monday morning, 18 May 2026 beginning at 9:00 AM ET.

Winning bids are subject to a 22.5% buyer's fee for bids placed on this website and 25% for all others.

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We recognize that our users may have various Internet Browsers and Operating Systems. We like our visitors to have the best possible experience when using our bidding platform. However, we do recognize that it is impossible to develop applications that work identically, efficiently and effectively on all web browsers. The CNG bidding platform supports the latest stable major version and stable previous version of Chrome and Firefox.