Watch List notes:

JDL Collection Part II: Geek Coins
ASIA. SATRAPS OF CARIA.

MAUSSOLLUS, 377–353.

Tetradrachm, Halicarnassus 377-353, AR 15.12 g.
Obv. Laureate head of Apollo facing three-quarters right, with hair loose and parted in the middle of the forehead. Rev. ΜΑΥΣΣℵ?ΛΛ[Ο] Zeus Stratios standing right on ground line, holding bipenna in right hand and leaning left hand on long sceptre.
Literature
Traité II/2, 90, pl. XC, 2
BMC Caria 181, 1–2
SNG von Aulock - cf. 2358–2360 (letters in field) SNG Copenhagen 590
J. Konuk, The Coinage of the Hekatomnids of Caria, unpublished DPhil, Oxford, 1998, 236, 26, pl. 13, 26 (this coin)
Gulbenkian 2, 781
Kraay-Hirmer pl. 187, 638 (variant)
M.-M. Bendenoun, Coins of the Ancient World, A portrait of the JDL Collection, Tradart, Genève, 2009, 27 (this coin)
Condition
A sublime portrait of enchanting beauty, work of a very skilled master engraver. Lovely old cabinet tone and extre- mely fine.

Provenance
The Numismatic Auction Ltd I, New York 1982, lot 118.
The Hecatomnid dynasty, comprised of a founding father, two daughters and three sons, was something of a political marvel, for it endured nearly sixty years under the authority of four Persian Kings. Early in the 4th Century B.C. the dynastic
founder, Hecatomnus, was installed as satrap of Caria by King Artaxerxes II. Being so distant from Persepolis, the seat of the Persian administration, the Carian satrap enjoyed a great deal of autonomy – a blessing which posed problems of its own, and which demanded crafty and enterprising leadership to survive.
The coinage of the dynasty began under Hecatomnus, who initially found inspiration in the types of Miletus, but who soon introduced Rhodian-weight tetradrachms with a personal type showing on their obverse the standing figure of Zeus Labraun- dus, and on their reverse a lion ready to pounce. Though the lion type was abandoned by Hecatomnus' successor, Maussol- lus, in favour of the facing head of Helios, Zeus was retained as the standard reverse type for all of the major coinages of the dynasty in precious metal.
This particular Zeus, who holds a sceptre and a double-axe (labrys), was avidly worshipped at a picturesque sanctuary at Labraunda, a remote village along a mountain pass some dis- tance from Hecatomnus' home town of Mylasa. Though several ancient literary accounts, including those of Strabo, Herodotus and Callimachus, name the cult at Labraunda as that of Zeus Stratios ('warlike'), inscriptions at the site typically identify the god as Zeus Labraundus.
Of all Carian satraps, Maussollus is the best remembered be- cause his name is embedded in mausoleum, a word inspired by this satrap's elaborate burial structure at Halicarnassus, which was canonized as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. When Maussollus died in 353 an interesting chain of succession was initiated. Power was assumed by his sister-wife Artemisia, who two years later is said to have died of grief; then one of Maussollus' brothers, Hidrieus, assumed the title of Satrap, and upon Hidrieus' death, his sister-wife, Ada, came to power, only to be ousted by her last sibling, Pixodarus.