CARTHAGE. Circa 350-320 BC. Stater (Gold, 19 mm, 9.42 g, 4 h). Head of Tanit to left, wearing an earring made up of a long central pendant flanked by two lines of three pearls, a necklace tied at the back and hung with eight pendants, and with her hair arranged with a small curl at her forehead and wearing a grain wreath. Rev. Horse standing right, with his tail hanging straight down; in field to right before the horse's chest, three pellets arranged vertically. Cf. Jenkins & Lewis Group IIIe-f. Very rare, apparently an unknown variant of the type. Toned, well-centered and attractive. Minor bang on Tanit's forehead, otherwise, extremely fine.

In some ways this coin is quite mysterious! It may well have been struck from dies, which had been used for a short while but were then withdrawn because some of the design elements were subsequently disapproved. While we often feel that the engravers responsible for ancient coin dies were pretty much free to produce designs that only needed to roughly follow an ordered scheme, thus allowing the engravers a wide degree of latitude, there were limits. The Arethusa heads on the tetradrachm coinage of Syracuse struck during the 480s-460s BC can vary wildly, and include some that are, quite honestly, wildly ugly, they still seem to have circulated freely.