Attica, Athens AR Tetradrachm. Circa 515-500/490 BC. Archaic head of Athena to right, wearing crested Attic helmet decorated with chevron and dot pattern / Owl standing three-quarters to right, head facing, olive sprig behind; ΑΘΕ before, all within incuse square. Seltman Group L; Asyut Group IVa; Svoronos pl. 4; HGC 4, 1589. 17.22g, 24mm, 11h.

Extremely Fine; of beautiful archaic style with detailed texturing on owl's body and complete helmet crest. Very Rare.

From a private UK collection.

The famous Athenian 'owl' tetradrachm, unquestionably one of the most influential coins of all time, was introduced by the tyrant Hippias sometime between c.525 and c.510 BC, with van Alfen offering a date of about 515 as the most current view. The basic design would remain unchanged for nearly five hundred years, be extensively copied throughout the Mediterranean, and is today, as it was then, emblematic of Greek culture.

The quality of the engraving on the early owl tetradrachms varies greatly, from the sublime to some which are very crude indeed. This disparity led Seltman to propose that those tetradrachms of fine style, such as the present piece, were issues from a 'civic' mint in Athens, while those exhibiting little talent on the part of the engravers emanated from an 'imperial' mint in the Attic or Thracian hinterlands, or Paeonia, though this has subsequently been disproven.

Athens was one of the few Greek cities with significant silver deposits in their immediate territory, a remarkable stroke of fortune upon which Xenophon reflected: 'The Divine Bounty has bestowed upon us inexhaustible mines of silver, and advantages which we enjoy above all our neighbouring cities, who never yet could discover one vein of silver ore in all their dominions.' The mines at Laurion had been worked since the bronze age, but it would be only later in 483 that a massive new vein of ore would be discovered that enabled Athens to finance grand new schemes such as the construction of a fleet of 200 triremes, a fleet that would later prove decisive in defending Greece at the Battle of Salamis.