Need Help Identifying-Silver Drahm With Hercules

King Lysimachus, I believe. I can't see the king's name, either - I can't even be sure whether it's to the left, right, or below the seated Zeus. The word to the right of the throned looks more like "basileos" rather than the name, which wouldn't match the examples of the type on Wildwinds from this ruler and mint, but the three mintmarks - the forepart of a lion, the crescent and the pentagram - all occur on coins of this mint and ruler. Example.

I believe the correct answer to your questions is "yes".

The Hercules-and-Zeus design was spread throughout the Greek world during Alexander's reign; while it was not originally intended that the head of Hercules was not actually a depiction of Alexander, it seems to have become a popular interpretation. The design was copied by the various successors of Alexander, sometimes with Alexander's name still on the coin. Eventually, long after Alexander's death, tribute coins to Alexander were issued with an actual portrait purporting to be of Alexander himself replacing the head of Hercules.


The short answer is, "we don't know".

We don't really know what most of the various mintmarks on Greek coins mean; even for the ones where we can clearly read letters in a monogram, we don't know what the letters stand for. Most symbols are personal marks or "privy marks" for individual mint workers and city officials; some symbols, such as the Bee of Ephesus, are intended to be symbols of the city itself, but I don't think the pentagram falls into that category for Colophon. I presume that it's only through study of hoard evidence and other archaeological research that we can attribute these pentagram coins to Colophon.

I did a parcial inscription search at Wildwinds (A MAEAZ > 'find more')and found this.

http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/bigp...r_III/i.html

Don't know if this will help.

Thanks everyone for your responses. This is great! It helped a lot!