Featured Is This What Alexander the Great Looked Like? A Diadochi Tetradrachm

This is my consignment to Shanna: I bought it from Nomos in 2015 but if you happen to know of an earlier pedigree, I'd be very interested

 

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very good research . I have some coins support you ,
thanks a lot very useful

 

Welcome @Alsadeek Alsadouk

 

What an awesome write up and thread! (Very glad I stumbled across it) Great work @Curtisimo !!!
Here is my, long sought after, recent Lysimachos purchase (mine must be a teenage Alexander iii, with all those pimples)..



Lysimachos
Kings of Thrace. Pella. 305-281 BC. Tetradrachm AR
27mm., 15,95g.
Head of the deified Alexander the Great to right,
wearing diadem with fluttering ends and with the horn
of Ammon around his ear / ΙΩ
Ι, Athena, wearing robes and
helmet, seated to left on throne, holding Nike on her
right hand and resting her left elbow on large round
shield adorned with a gorgoneion; to left monogram.
very fine. Thompson 253; Müller 471. (Seller photos)

 

Thanks Ryro and sweet new acquisition! I'm glad you came across my old thread as well.

I was thinking about this coin portrait a few weeks ago when I visited Pompeii and Naples where the Alexander mosaic was discovered. When I finish loading my photos I'll upload my photos of the house it was found in. Here is the original mosaic as displayed in Naples. It is thought to be a copy of a painting by Philoxenus of Eretria made for the Diodochi Cassander.

Modern interpretation of the original Greek painting - Naples


The Alexander Mosaic - ca 100 BC


Here's a lesser known depiction of Alexander shown, wild hair and all, about to marry Roxana - from Pompeii


This one I managed to photograph in profile. It's a bust of Alexander copied from a Greek original during the time of Hadrian. It was in the wonderful National Museum attached to the baths of Diocletian. That Alexander is everywhere in Italy once you start looking for him ...much more so than I remember from Greece actually

 

My contribution to this thread the only lifelike portrait I own was minted mid 3rd century Macedon.
Roman Provincial. MACEDON. Koinon of Macedonia. Pseudo-autonamous 222 AD to 249 AD
. Æ (27mm, 11.19 g, 6h). Beroea mint.
OBV: AΛEΞANΔPOC bust of Alexander the Great right, flowing hair.
REV: KOINMA KE ΔONΩN.B.NE Two tetrastyle temple façades; in field between, column surmounted by statue.
Unpublished in the standard references. VF, green surfaces, ragged edge, some smoothing and roughness.

From the Belgica Collection. Ex Classical Numismatic Group Electronic Auction 242 (13 October 2010), lot 100. And my purchase CNG E Auction 415, lot 323.