Notae Numismaticae - Zapiski Numizmatyczne (14.2019)

JAROSŁAW BODZEK

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instance, the metal used to produce the coins was supposed to have come from
the melting down of silver dishes.
To a certain degree, it may be that the origin of the metal (from subsidies on
the part of the Persian administration) is reflected in the pro-Persian iconography
of some of the coins from c. 400 BC, that is, the motif of a “tiarate head”.48
However, we also have other instances - albeit not many - in which a different
strategy was taken up by Achaemenid officials with regard to the financing of what
were probably military activities in either Lycia or with the participation of Lycians.
This was the striking of coins by Persian officials in their own name, ones that were
intended for the Lycian market.
The well known example of a direct interference by a Persian official into
the Lycian coinage is a unique silver stater struck at Xanthos in the name of
Tissaphernes (Pl. 1, Fig. I).49 The obverse of this coin shows the image of
a horseman in Iranian cavalry attire with the legend ARNNAHE (= Xantos [gen.
singularis]). The reverse has the head of Athena/Maliya in an Attic helmet and
the legend ZISAPRNNA (= Tissafernes).50 The stater is remarkable in several
respects. Firstly, it was struck in the Xanthos (Lycian Arfina) mint, with legends
in Lycian alphabet and according to local so-called light weight standard.51
Secondly, it bears the name of a real Persian grandee.52 Next, the coin iconography
is somewhat unusual for Lycian coinage. Although the Athena/Maliya head was
a typical coin type in Western Lycia at the end of the 5th and in the first decades of
the 4th centuries BC,53 the Persian/Iranian horseman motif is not attested in archaic
and classical Lycian coinages.54 One should have in mind of course the great

48 On this topic, cf. M0RKHOLM and ZAHLE 1976: 70, 79ff; ZAHLE 1982; IDEM 1989: 175f; IDEM
1991:150.
49 Cf. M0RKHOLM and NEUMANN 1978: M221; HURTER 1979: no. 6; ALRAM 1986: 105, no. 317;
ZAHLE 1990a: 176, no. 88; DEBORD 1999: Pl. I, 14; VISMARA 1999: 100, no. 14; MILDENBERG 2000:
Pl. I. 13; SNG Cop. Suppl. no. 460; BODZEK 2011: 102ff, Pl. II, 4; IDEM 2014a: 64, Fig. 20. The coin was
included in the so-called „Tissaphernes Hoard“ published originally by S. Hurter (1979) and hidden c. 390 BC.
The author discussed also widely the coin itself; on the hoard see also: CH III: no. 14; CH IV: no. 16; CH V:
no. 16; VISMARA 1999: 100-101, no. 14; IDEM 2018, passim.
50 The exact legend on the obverse reads as follows: [AP]NNA[HE]; cf. M0RKHOLM and NEUMANN
1978: 25, M221; see also: ALRAM 1986: 105; MELCHERT 2004: 5, Amna-2. With regard to the legend of
the reverse, which reads ZISA[PRN]NA, cf. M0RKHOLM and NEUMANN 1978: M221; ALRAM 1986: 105;
MELCHERT 2004: 110, Zisapmna. The satraps’ name was rendered in similar way in inscription wrote down
on the famous “Inscribed Pillar” at Xanthus (TAM I: 44c 1 [zisapmna], 11, 15 [kizzaprnna]); cf. MELCHERT
2004: 97, 110.
51 On the subject of the so-called “light weight” standard (a stater weighing between 8.2 and 8.8 g) used in
western Lycia, cf. ZAHLE 1989: 171: TIETZ 2002; KOLB 2018: 562f. According to J. Zahle’s classification of
Lycian coinage, coins struck in western Lycia in the light standard were placed in what is called group C.
52 I use here a term introduced by Leo Mildenberg (2000: 9).
53 Cf. ZAHLE 1989: 180, Fig. 1.
54 The assessment that Mildenberg (2000: 10) comes to - that the coin has “Lycian images” - is thus not
entirely correct.