Watch List notes:

Greek Coins
Cyrene

Tetradrachm circa 520, AR 17.13 g. The city-goddess Cyrene, wearing stephane and a long chiton, seated l. on diphros, her r. hand reaching out to a plant of silphium; behind, silphium fruit. Rev. Forepart of Pegasus r. in dotted frame; all within shallow incuse square. B. V. Head, NC 1886, p. 9 and pl. I, 6. BMC 12. For obverse type, cf. Kunstfreund 14 (this obverse die).
Of the highest rarity, the finer of only three specimens known. An issue of
tremendous interest and fascination struck on an unusually complete
flan. Light tone and good very fine
The umbelliferous plant Silphium must have been the most celebrated, and most profitable, export of Cyrene, for it is the perennial emblem of its coinage. It reputedly was a gift of the healing god Apollo and had a wide range of medical applications. The herbalist Dioscorides (III.94) lists a great many of them, ranging from relief for a tooth ache to a remedy for menstrual problems and epilepsy. Being such a valued product, its harvest was carefully regulated, similarly to how the Athenians enforced strict laws concerning the stewardship of olive trees in Attica. Even with such controls in place, demand for silphium was so great that it appears to have become extinct by about the 1st Century A.D.Perhaps the best known use of silphium was as a method of birth control, to which this obverse may bear reference. It shows a silphium fruit behind the eponymous city nymph Cyrene, seated, and extending her right hand toward a full silphium plant as she places her left hand in her lap. It has been suggested that the conspicuous placement of her left hand in this composition alludes to the value of silphium juice for the prevention of pregnancy.