★ The Facing Heads of Istros ★

Moesia, Istros AR Drachm. Circa 340/330-313 BC. Two young male heads facing, right head inverted / IΣTPIH above sea-eagle on dolphin left, •Δ to right above dolphin. Cf. Dima Group IV, pl. 3, 5; HGC 3.2, 1800. 6.66g, 17mm, 6h.

Good Very Fine.

From the William Stancomb Collection;
Ex Auktionshaus H. D. Rauch GmbH, Auction 63, 3-4 May 1999, lot 72.

The enigmatic obverse type of Istros with two facing young male heads, one inverted, is unique to numismatics and has long caused much speculation: it was originally suggested in 1898 that they were wind gods blowing in opposite directions or symbols of the rising and setting sun personified by the sun god Apollo (B. Pick, AMNG I.1: Dacian und Moesian, Berlin 1898 and B. Head, Historia Nummorum 1911, p. 274). In 1949 they were identified as the two heads of the Dioskouroi, although they were never depicted in this way in Antiquity (J. Babelon ‘Les Dioscures a Tomi’, in Mélage d’archeologie et d’histoire offert à Ch. Picard. Paris 1949, pp. 26-7). Others saw in them the personification of the two branches of the ancient River Istros (Danube), flowing in different directions into the Euxine Pontos (Black Sea), though again without any such iconography of river-gods in Greek numismatics (J. Hind, ‘Istrian faces and the River Danube’, in NC 1970, pp. 7-17).

Recently a very interesting theory has been proposed for this most unusual composition: since the artistic treatment of the heads closely resembles that of the sun-god Apollo, it has been postulated that they may have inner meaning connected to an almost total solar eclipse over Istros, calculated to have occurred in 434 BC. An eclipse was in the ancient world considered an omen and the date coincides with the conventional inception date of this coinage to the late 5th century BC (W. Salow and P. Murdin, ‘The double heads of Istrus: the oldest eclipse on a coin’, in JHA 25, 2004, pp. 21-7).