★ Ex Bank Leu 45, 1988 ★

Kings of Sarmatia, Pharzoios AV Stater. Olbia, circa AD 50-75. Diademed head with moustache right, monogram below / BAΣIΛEΩ[Σ] ΦAPZOIO[Y], eagle with spread wings standing right on tamga, OΛ above Σ over ΠΑ monogram to right. SNG Stancomb 930 (this coin) = Kovalenko, fig. 18 (this coin); Jameson IV, 2537 (same dies). 8.28g, 18mm, 12h.

Good Very Fine; engraved in marvellous Hellenistic style. Of the greatest rarity; the second recorded example from this die combination, and only the second coin of Pharzoios to be offered at auction in the past 20 years.

From the William Stancomb Collection; this coin published in Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Great Britain, Volume XI, The William Stancomb Collection of Coins of the Black Sea Region (Oxford, 2000);
This coin published in S. Kovalenko, Monetary Portraiture in the Northern Black Sea Littoral, Memoranda Numismatica Arheniensia, (Athens 2018);
Ex Bank Leu AG Zürich, Auction 45, 26 May 1988, lot 189.

Only nine gold staters of Pharzoios are listed by P. Karyshkovskij, ‘O monetakh tsarya Farzoya’, in Arkheologicheskie pamyatniki severo-Zapadnogo Prichernomorya, Kiev 1982, pp. 66-82, and one other in CoinArchives.com (ex Dr. Lawrence Adams collection: CNG-Triton sale 19, 5 January 2019, lot 2033, (realised $19,000).

Pharzoios was most probably the chief of a coalition of Sarmatian tribes, closely related to the Skythians, dwelling to the northwest of Olbia in the first century AD. Defined as a Basilios, Pharzoios is unknown to history other than through this small issue of gold staters, securely attributed to the mint Olbia on the basis of the sigla ΟΛ in the reverse field and the use of similar monograms, symbols and types shared with contemporary civic issues. Some of these issues also bear Greek numerals from 6 to 9, which may be interpreted as either regnal or civic dates from AD 53/4-56/7 (cf. SNG Moskau, Staatliches Historisches Museum, 2394-2526 and SNG Stancomb 925-9).