Description
Asia. Lesbos. Methymna. Stater ca. 500/480-460 BC. Silver 8.34 g.; 20.3 mm.
Obverse: Boar to the right, head bowed, left foreleg slightly raised (charging position?), on a ground line. Obverse capiton: MAΘVMNAIOΣ //
Reverse: Head of Athena to right, wearing a helmet decorated with a projecting spike and volutes on bowl, wearing an earring and a necklace, all within a dotted square border, within an incuse square.
HGC: 6-884.
Example of the highest rarity. Less than 10 examples of these Staters (or Didrachms) are known to date for one of the first coins minted by the city of Methymna, on the island of Lesbos.
Extremely fine EF 40-45
Provenance Details
Ex Vinchon, 22 November 1995, lot 45. Faune d'Argent Collection.
Comment
Issued according to an Attic-Euboic standard, the obverse bears the city's ethnic engraved with archaic letters (such as theta with a cross rather than a simple dash), testifying to the earliness of this coinage in Greek monetary history. The reverse is another illustration of the archaic art of coin engraving, with this remarkable portrait of Athena with the characteristic features of this period: dotted hair, a face elongated forwards and an almond-shaped eye.
These coins are found only in the most prestigious collections of Greek coins, having belonged to famous names such as the Jameson, Pozzi and Lockett collections. Jameson 1466 (these dies); HGC 6, 884 (these dies); Lockett Collection XII, 2247 & SNG Lockett 2776 (these dies); BMC 1 (these dies); Gulbenkian 717 (these dies); Boston 1658 (these dies); Pozzi 2338 (these dies); P.R. Franke, ‘Zur Münzprägung von Methymna’, in H.G. Buchholz, Methymna (1975), 1.
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