#kyzikos

Extremely Rare Hekte with Helios & Horses, C. 410 BC

An electrum hekte from Kyzikos, Mysia with a naked Helios kneeling while holding two horses by their bridles; a tunny fish, the civic badge of Kyzikos, is below them while the reverse side is a quadripartite incuse square. Extremely fine and extremely rare, almost certainly the finest known.  

The engravers of the Kyzicene coinage drew their ideas from numerous sources, both local and foreign.  Here, the inter-connected mythological relationships of Helios to Apollo; and Apollo as father to the city-founder Kyzikos point to an indigenous origin. The symmetrically balanced composition of the sun-god Helios flanked by the horses’ foreparts must have been sculptural in inspiration and it has been suggested that since the composition on the obverse is perfectly square that it was copied from a metope of a temple. Although full staters bearing this composition exist in some numbers, the hektes are exceedingly rare.