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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 2215181, member: 74282&quot;]The coin I&#039;m sharing today is another bronze of the Ptolemaic kingdom, but unlike the last one that I shared which was minted in Alexandria, Egypt, this one was minted in the town of Kyrene in modern-day Libya. The obverse features Ptolemy I, founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty. It&#039;s thought that these were minted well after the reign of Ptolemy I, however the Ptolemies who came after so revered the founder of their kingdom that they continued to use his image on various coins and so you see him on their later tetradrachms as well. The reverse features Libya, the goddess who personified the land of Libya in Greek and Roman mythology.</p><p><br /></p><p>Kyrene, the town this coin was minted in, was an important town in Greek and Roman times, and was known for many things, and I think one of the most intriguing of these is for the plant that was its main export in antiquity: silphium. Silphium was a plant that was used as birth control by the Greeks and Romans and was so important that it even shows up on some coins from the region(sadly not this one, though). Unfortunately, the ancients could not figure out how to cultivate it and could only harvest wild silphium and their demand for it lead to the plant&#039;s extinction, so today we don&#039;t even know exactly what the plant was or how it worked. The extinction of silphium caused a dramatic reduction in the city&#039;s trade and by the 4th century AD the economic decline combined with natural disasters lead to the desertion of the city.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]433277[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Ptolemaic Kingdom, Ptolemy III, Euergetes, 246-222 BC AE22(7.18g). Kyrene, Libya mint. Diademed head of Ptolemy I right/BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΠTOΛEMAIOY, Head of Libya right, hair bound with tania, small cornucopia below chin. Svoronos 871</p><p><br /></p><p>Note: the attributions on these are somewhat imprecise, so attributing them to Ptolemy III is only an approximation based on a general time period given by hoard evidence, though I wouldn&#039;t be surprised if Lorber&#039;s forthcoming work brings a more precise attribution.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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