Watch List notes:

Greek Coins
Cyrenaica, Cyrene. Tetradrachm circa 390-380 BC, AR 13.47 g.

Description

K–V/[P]–A/N/–AI/O–N (retrograde) Silphium plant with three pairs of leaves and seven umbels. Rev. [NIKIOΣ] Laureate, bearded and horned head of Zeus Ammon r.

References
BMC 79 and pl. X, 3-4 B (these reverse dies)
SNG Spencer Churchill 170 (this coin)
Gillet 1213 (this coin)
SNG Lockett 3469 (this reverse die)
Bendenoun, Splendeur et témoingnage, 110 (this coin)

Condition
Very rare and among the finest tetradrachms of Cyrene in existence. An enchanting portrait of late Classical style, work of a very skilled engraver. A wonderful old cabinet tone, slightly off-centre on obverse, otherwise extremely fine

Provenance
Naville sale 4, 17 June 1922, Grand duc Alexandre Michailovitch, 988
Leu sale 45, 1988, 295
Tradart sale December 2014, 200 (illustrated on the front cover page)
The E. G. Spencer Churchill collection
The Charles Gillet collection

The silphium plant, which was perhaps a type of giant fennel, was both indigenous to and limited to Cyrenaica, and its by-products were the principal export of the entire region. Its uses were said to be numerous and varied: it served as feed for cattle; it was sought as a cure-all for many physical ailments, from alleviating toothache to treating epilepsy, and as a form of birth control; it was used as a spice; and it even served cosmetic purposes as a perfume. Because the plant resisted cultivation but was so important to the local economy, its harvesting appears to have been tightly regulated. Even so, by about the first century A.D. it had become extinct.
As important as the silphium plant was to the people of Cyrenaica, it is no wonder that it became the badge used on the coinage of all of the region's cities. The plant is usually depicted in full, as on the coin of Cyrene offered here, complete with leaves, flowers, and fruits (on the earliest issues only the fruit is shown). The reverse portrays a remarkable bust of Zeus Ammon, the region's most important deity, which by the time this coin was struck in the early part of the fourth century B.C. had become a common feature of Cyrene's coinage.