KHEREI SILVER STATER – PORTRAIT ISSUE PUBLISHED IN MUESELER’S LYKISCHE MUENZEN AND REVUE SUISSE 98 – CHOICE VF NGC GRADED GREEK LYCIAN COIN (Inv. 19947)

$1,400.00

19947. LYCIAN DYNASTS. KHEREI, ca. 440–410/390 BC.
Silver Drachm, 4.23 g, 15 mm. Issue of Tlos.
Obv. Helmeted head of Athena right. Rev. Head of Kherei left, wearing kyrbasia, all within incuse square.
Published: Wilhelm Müseler, Lykische Münzen in europäischen Privatsammlungen, no. VI, 46 (this coin listed and illustrated) = Müseler, “Kheriga and Kherẽi in central Lycia and the Xanthos Valley:the rise of a migrant dynasty,” Revue Suisse 98 (2020), no. 6.8.2 (this coin listed and illustrated on pl. 12).
Ex Dr. Kaya Sayar collection = Gorny & Mosch 79, 10/14/1996, lot 247.
NGC graded CHOICE VF, Strike 3/5, Surface 4/5, Müseler reference noted on label.

This drachm struck by Kherei, a dynast whose power seems to have been centered on the important city of Xanthos, illustrates well Lycia’s placement at a political and cultural crossroads between the Greece in the west and the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the East. The obverse imitates the head of Athena found on Athenian tetradrachms, which served as the money of the Delian League and circulated widely in Asia Minor and the Near East. At the same time, the reverse portrait of Kherei shows him wearing a Persian tiara, the traditional headgear of a satrap although there is no clear evidence that the dynast held this position in the Achaemenid administration. Its combination with a laurel wreath—an attribute suitable for a god—suggests that both attributes served more as borrowed emblems of power rather than as indicators of official status.