The Karne Alexanders

Lloyd Walter Hart Taylor
2020 Zenodo  
The northern Phoenician port city of Karne was responsible for three small, short duration emissions of Alexander tetradrachms in the period 327-224 BC. The coinage is rare, represented by a corpus of 29 known examples struck from seven obverse tetradrachm dies paired to 13 reverse dies, plus a single drachm die pair. Series 1 and 2 are Macedonian imperial tetradrachm emissions, struck in the period c. 327-320 BC, separated from each other by up to six years. Series 1 is dated to 327/6 BC based
more » ... on the presence of iconographic detail identical to that found on the coinage of nearby Arados. Similar reasoning indicates that Series 2 dates to the interval 324/3-321/0 BC. It was possibly struck in 321/0 BC at the direction of Antigonos Monopthalmos, the strategos of Asia, in association with the passage of the Macedonian royal army from Triparadeisos into Asia Minor. Iconographic detail and style suggest that mint workers may have been mobilised from nearby Arados for each of Series 1 and 2, while technical factors, including the identification of what is possibly the first ferrous tetradrachm die in the Alexander series, suggest the alternative possibility that dies were manufactured at nearby Arados and shipped to Karne for the striking of coinage. Series 3 consists of a small emission of tetradrachms and drachms bearing the year 35 date of the Aradian autonomous era (225/4 BC), part of a co-ordinated regional emission, struck as a contribution from the cities of the Aradian Peraia to help finance the invasion of Asia Minor by Seleukos III.
doi:10.5281/zenodo.3752785 fatcat:3nz7l6zwhbc3le6kygrdtbuvs4