Melakiathon, 392 – 361. Siglos circa 392 – 361, AR 10.35 g. Heracles advancing r., wearing lion’s skin and holding in r. hand club and bow in l. Rev. Lion advancing r., with head facing. Traité II –. BMC –. Tziambazis –. SNG Copenhagen –. E.T. Newell, Some unpublished coins of eastern dynasts, NNM 30, 1926, 1 (these dies). SilCoinCy –.
Of the highest rarity, apparently only the second specimen known.
Old cabinet tone and about extremely fine / good very fine

Ex Leu sale 20, 1978, 148.

Milkyaton—more commonly rendered in the Greek form Melekiathon—was a Phoenician king of Citium in eastern Cyprus in the fourth century BC. His reign was long thought to have been interrupted by that of Demonikos, a Greek king supposedly imposed on Citium by Evagoras I of Salamis and the Athenian general, Chabrias, in 388/7 BC, but recent scholarship now makes Demonikos a member of the dynasty of Lapethus. Little else is known about the reign of Milkyaton beyond the brief usurpation of Demonikos, which now appears never to have happened. Nevertheless, Milkyaton has an important place in the modern study of ancient Cyprus. Thanks to a bilingual inscription in Phoenician and Cypriot syllabic script erected in the thirteenth year of his reign it was possible for the English Assyriologist George Smith to decipher the Cypriot syllabary. The critical component for the decipherment was the king’s name. This extremely rare siglos (shekel to Milkyaton and his Phoenician subjects) features Herakles and a lion, types that were traditional for the Phoenician dynasty of Citium. In a Phoenician context, Heracles here may represent the Tyrian god Melqart (”King of the City”) who was already identified with Greek Heracles in the fifth century BC. The animal on the reverse may be the Nemean lion slain by Heracles in Greek myth, but perhaps more likely it serves as an ancient emblem of kingship that was common throughout the Near East.