Kyrene, Reign of Magas AR didrachm. 294 – 275 BC

KYRENAICA, Kyrene — Reign of Magas. AR didrachm, c. 294 – 275 BC. 21.5 mm • 7.65 g • die axis 12 h. Obverse: Head of Zeus Karneios left, crowned with the ram’s horn of Ammon; lightly beaded border. Reverse: Upright silphion plant with four pairs of spreading branches and umbel-like blossom; flanking monograms in left and right fields. References: cf. BMC Cyrenaica 250 (same dies, left monogram mis-read); De Callataÿ & Lorber Kyrenaica pl. 4, 17; SNG Copenhagen – (unlisted). Lightly toned silver with silvery-grey highlights; minor surface roughness on obverse, otherwise sharply struck and well-centred.

When Ptolemy I installed his energetic stepson Magas as strategos of Kyrenaica (c. 300 BC), few guessed the young prince would soon turn the coastal cities of North Africa into an independent Greek kingdom. By 284 BC Magas had proclaimed himself basileus and cemented his position through marriage to Apama, daughter of the Seleucid king Antiochos I—an audacious bid to balance Ptolemaic Egypt with Seleucid Asia.

This silver didrachm belongs to the short, transitional phase just after Magas assumed control but before his regal title appears on the coinage. The obverse shows Zeus Karneios, the ram-horned patron brought from Sparta by the settlers of Kyrene in the 7th century BC; his profile is rendered in a vibrant Hellenistic style that heralds the new era.

The reverse depicts the legendary silphion plant, whose aromatic resin was prized from Egypt to India as a spice, perfume base, and—so the ancients believed—powerful contraceptive. Silphion was so central to Kyrene’s economy that Theophrastos calls it “the plant by which the Cyrenaeans prosper.”ⁱ Its stylised form on the coin—thick trunk, whorled side-stalks, and a blossoming umbel—became a visual trademark for the city’s silver until the plant’s over-harvesting led to its disappearance in the early Roman period.

The two monograms at left and right are control-marks most likely naming the mint magistrates responsible for the issue. Hoard evidence (Buttrey’s “Malia” group) places these silphion didrachms in steady circulation alongside the Corinthian-weight staters of western Greece and the tetradrachms of Ptolemaic Egypt, attesting to Kyrene’s commercial reach at the height of Magas’ independence.

A handsome, well-centred piece that unites Kyrene’s Doric religious heritage with the botanical emblem of her fabled wealth—struck during the brief window when Magas stood poised between governor and king.

ⁱ Theophrastos, Historia Plantarum 6.3.1.