★ Extremely rare Monounios Stater ★

KINGS OF ILLYRIA. Monounios, circa 300-280 BC. Stater (Silver, 23 mm, 10.71 g, 3 h), Dyrrhachion. Cow standing right, her head bent back to left to suckle her calf, kneeling left beneath her; above, jawbone of a boar to right. Rev. ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΜΟΝΟΥΝΙΟΥ Double stellate pattern in the form of a square within a double linear border; all within linear circle; club and spearhead on the fields. BMC 1. S. Gjongecaj. “Le Trésor de Kreshpan (Albanie)” in RN 153 (1998), p. 95, Type 4, 202-203. HGC 3.1, 69. Extremely rare; only two examples of this rare type were recorded in the Kreshpan hoard. Very fine.

Monounios was an Illyrian king about whom almost nothing is known (it has also been suggested that he was a Dardanian). He seems to have been involved with the Macedonian succession question after the death of Lysimachos; a helmet inscribed with his name seems to have been found in Lake Ohrid. The coins prove that he was able to control Dyrrhachion for a short period in the early third century BC: his monogram appears on the coinage and then, for a time, he was even able to put his full name and title on staters, even omitting the city’s own name. This indicates that the city was fully under the king’s control (there are coins in the name of his successor Mytilios as well). In any case, these coins are very rare, indeed.