Phokaia (BC 387-326) B86 - EL 1/6 Stater

ca 380-360 BC. EL 1/6 Stater - Hekte (2.54g). Bearded head facing left, wearing Persian headdress; behind, seal swimming / Four-part incuse square. Of exceptional quality and struck in high relief. Choice EF.

Bodenstedt interpreted the head as a portrait of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. While Tissaphernes was a bad candidate - he was executed in 395 BC (while the coin was issued some decades later) - it is not yet clear whether the head is meant to be a portrait altogether. J.H. Kroll called the 'satrapal portraits' "generic rather than individualized representations" (The Emergence of Ruler Portrait, in: Schultz/von den Hoff (eds), Early Hellenistic Portraiture (Cambridge 2007), p. 114), and C. Harrison has convincingly shown that many of the so-called 'satrapal portraits' are meant to represent the heroized Persians who raised Darius I to the Persian throne (Numismatic Problems in the Achaemenid West, in: Gorman/Robinson (eds), Oikistes. Studies Offered in Honor of A.J. Graham (Leiden 2002), pp. 301-319). Harrison's theory does not apply in this case, since the head gear does not have that famous knot at the forehead. So it may well be that one of the satraps of the 370s and 360s is intended, perhaps Autophradates, then satrap of Lydia and the fiercest opponent of the satrap of Paphlagonia Datames during the satraps' revolt 368-358 BC.