Description: Semi Autonomous Bronze coin of Hierocaesarea in Lydia circa 100-54 BC

Obverse: Head of Artemis Right;

Reverse: Bow and Quiver in Wreath; Monogram of ethnic: IEP to right; Monogram AP to left. 

Mint: Hierocaesarea , Lydia

Size: 17 mm

Weight: 3.67g

Ref: Imhoof-Blumer LS (LYDISHE STADTMUNZEN) #3 (not plated); GPRC Lydia 177;

Condition: aVF.  Nice example of this Extremely RARE type from a scarce Polis.   Use the Pictures as your judge as grading is subjective.

Inventory#: 54.12

Notes:

Hierocaesarea (Hierocaesareia ; Hierokaisareia) was an ancient town in Lydia, Asia Minor. The name comes from the greek for "sacred".  The towns location in Modern Turkey has been fixed on the south bank of the Kum-Chai river known in ancient times as the Hyllus (or later Phrygius or Glaucus) and about fifteen miles south of Thyatira. The town was originally called Hieracome (Hierokometes) from an ancient sanctuary of Artemis Περσικη, and coins are attributed to it of the second or first century B.C. with ΠΕΡΣΙΚΗ beneath the bust of Artemis on the obverse. The name Hierocaesareia was conferred upon it by Tiberius. 

Provincial coinage ranges from the time of Nero to that of Sev. Alex. Inscr., ΙЄΡΟΚΑΙCΑΡЄΩΝ. Magistrates—Archiereus, title of Nero., and Strategos or First Archon under the Antonines.

Coin types often refer to the cult of the Artemis Persica (often depicted in ancient art as a winged female with a lion on either side of her) of Perseus. Busts of ΠЄΡCΙΚΗ, ΙЄΡΑ CVΝΚΛΗΤΟC, ΙЄΡΟΚΑΙCΑΡЄΙΑ; also recumbent River-god ΓΛΑVΚΟC, who is not to be confused with the other ΓΛΑVΚΟC on coins of Eumeneia in Phrygia..   

Lydia was one of the provinces of Asia Minor bordering in ancient times both the Mediteranean and the Euxine or Black Sea. The ‘The Lydians,’ says Herodotus (i. 94), ‘were the first people we know of to strike coins of gold and of silver’ and Xenophanes of Colophon bears witness to the same tradition. Passing from these statements of ancient writers to an examination of the earliest Asiatic essays in the craft of coining, we are led to ascribe to the seventh century B.C., and probably to the reign of Gyges (B.C. 687- 652), the founder of the dynasty of the Mermnadae and of the new Lydian empire, as distinguished from the Lydia of more remote antiquity, the first issues of the Lydian mint. These are bean-shaped ingots of the metal called by the Greeks ‘electrum’ or ‘white gold’, a natural com- pound of gold and silver, collected at Sardes from the washings of the little mountain torrent Pactolus, and perhaps from diggings on the slopes of Tmolus and Sipylus. Ingots and rings, &c., of the precious metals adjusted to fixed weights had been used for purposes of exchange for ages before the Lydians first invented the convenient process of stamping them with marks as guarantees of value. Ingots thus stamped henceforth passed freely as current coin, and, so long as they were correct in weight, the exact amount of pure gold in each lump of metal does not appear to have been taken into consideration. The generally accepted rate of exchange between pure gold and silver stood in these times as 13.3 to 1, and the mixed metal, ‘electrum,’ of very variable quality, was roughly estimated at the rate of about 10 to 1, a convenient proportion which enabled bankers and money-changers to make use of a single set of weights for electrum and silver, and which accounts for the fact that the weights of the electrum staters correspond with those of the later silver staters, and depend upon the standard which happened to be in use for weighing silver in bullion and afterwards in coin in various districts (see supra, Ionia, p. 564). These standards were, in Lydia, the so-called Babylonic (stater 168 grs.) and the so-called Phoenician (stater 220 grs.).

Some excerpts from Head, Hist. Num.; Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia