Carthaginian coinage
Carthaginian or Punic coins were produced from the late fifth century BC through 146 BC by ancient Carthage, a Punic empire known as Rome's biggest rival located in present-day Tunis, Tunisia. A wide range of coinage was issued in gold, electrum, silver, billon, and bronze. The base denomination was the shekel, probably pronounced in Punic. Only a minority of Carthaginian coinage was produced or used in North Africa. Instead, the majority derive from Carthage's holdings in Sardinia and western Sicily. After the Punic Wars, Carthaginian coinage was replaced by Roman currency.
Background
Between the ninth and seventh centuries BC, the Phoenicians established colonies throughout the western Mediterranean, particularly in North Africa, western Sicily, Sardinia, and southern Iberia. Carthage soon became the largest of these communities, establishing particularly close economic, cultural, and political ties with Motya in western Sicily and Sulci in Sardinia.Although coinage began to be minted by Greek communities in Sicily and Southern Italy around 540 BC, Punic communities did not begin producing coins until around 425 BC. The first Punic mints were in western Sicily, at Motya and Ṣyṣ. The coinage that these communities produced is known as Siculo-Punic coinage. Like the coinage produced by the Greek communities in Sicily, it was minted solely in silver on the Attic-Euboic weight standard, and its iconography was mostly adapted from other pre-existing Sicilian coinages - principally those of Himera, Segesta, and Syracuse. This Siculo-Punic coinage probably preceded Phoenicia's own Tyrian shekels, which developed BC.
First Carthaginian coinage (c. 410 - 390 BC)
The first Carthaginian coinage seems to have been minted in 410 or 409 BC, to pay for the massive Carthaginian military intervention in Sicily that led to the Second Sicilian War and it continued through until the end of the Third Sicilian War. This coinage consisted solely of Attic weight silver tetradrachms, known as Series I, containing five separate chronological sub-groups.The obverse of these earliest coins bears the front half of a horse facing right, with a Punic language legend reading QRTḤDŠT. The reverse depicts a date palm tree, with the inscription MḤNT. From sub-group B, the obverse also features a winged Nike flying over the horse, holding a caduceus and a wreath. In the final sub-group, F, the forepart of the horse is replaced with a full horse, prancing freely.
This silver coinage may have been accompanied, in its later stages, by the first Carthaginian gold coinage, known as Jenkins-Lewis, Group I. This coinage is known from a single example. It was minted as a shekel or didrachm on the Phoenician weight standard. Its types, a horse on the obverse and a palm tree on the reverse are very similar to those of the silver, Series I, sub-group F.
Alongside these first Carthaginian issues, separate Siculo-Punic coinages continued to be produced by other cities within the Carthaginian sphere in western Sicily, notably Motya, Ṣyṣ-Panormus, Eryx, and Segesta.
Date and mint location
The date of the Series I silver is established by several pieces of evidence. A coin from sub-group B was overstruck by a coin of Agrigentum. Since minting activity ended at Agrigentum in 406 BC, when the Carthaginians destroyed the city, Series I must have already begun to circulate before this date. The whole series had come to an end by the early 380s BC, since a selection of all the sub-groups appears in two hoards deposited at that time: Contessa and Vito Superiore. The latter is particularly significant since the most likely occasion for its deposition is the Siege of Rhegium in 387 BC. The patterns of die linkage within the series - with a relatively high ratio of reverse dies to obverse dies and relatively few reverse dies shared by multiple obverse dies - indicate that minting was "intensive though spasmodic." Bringing this numismatic data into connection with the historical situation in these years as known from literary sources, Kenneth Jenkins argued that the Carthaginians initiated minting in order to pay for their initial expedition to Sicily in 410 BC, and continued producing coinage as required by their fluctuating circumstances during the following seventeen years of war, until peace was declared in 393 BC, following the Battle of Chrysas. The reverse legend, MḤNT, meaning 'encampment' has military overtones which support the idea that this coinage was intended to pay for ongoing military campaigns.The location of the mint where this coinage was produced is not certainly known. Later issues of Carthaginian silver were produced in Sicily, at Lilybaeum, but this city was only founded in 397/396 BC, following the destruction of Motya. The Carthaginian coinage is unlikely to have been produced in Motya before that date, since Motya seems to have continued minting its own coinage until its destruction. Therefore, Jenkins concludes that the initial production of the series probably took place in Carthage itself. The transition from sub-group E to sub-group F is marked by an iconographic shift, in which the obverse design goes from a depiction of the forepart of a horse to the depiction of a full horse. It is possible that change coincided with the shift of minting to the new city of Lilybaeum.
The gold-issue, Jenkins-Lewis Group I, is dated solely on the basis of its iconographic similarity to the final sub-group of the silver, which suggests that it was minted at the same time. It may have been minted in Carthage or Lilybaeum. In the ancient Mediterranean, the issue of gold coinage was often connected to times of particular crisis, when silver stocks had been exhausted and states were forced to resort to melting down jewellery and religious dedications. This might fit with production in the later stages of the seventeen year Carthaginian war in Sicily.
Iconography
Series I introduces two key motifs that continued to appear regularly on Carthaginian coinage throughout its history: the horse and the palm tree. The significance of both symbols is disputed, with a particular divide in scholarship around whether they should be interpreted in terms of Punic or Greek cultural traditions.Three main interpretations of the horse have been proposed. One is that the horse was a symbol of Baal Hammon, the chief god of Carthage, who was probably associated with warfare and the sun. However, our knowledge of Carthaginian religion and the nature of its deities is very limited. On much later Carthaginian coinage, the horse sometimes appears with a sun disc, which might support this interpretation. The second interpretation is that the horse refers to a foundation legend of Carthage, known from the Roman historian Justin. According to him, at the foundation of Carthage a horse's head was found in the ground and was interpreted as an omen of the city's future prosperity. It was common on Greek coinages in Sicily and southern Italy to depict motifs connected to the minting city's foundation. But it is not clear whether this was a foundation story that the Carthaginians themselves knew or just a story that was told about them by the Romans. The third interpretation is that the horse refers to the military purpose of the coinage. Important for this interpretation is the fact that from sub-group B onwards, the horse is accompanied by a winged female figure holding a wreath and a caduceus. In Greek art, this figure is a symbol of victory, known as Nike, and the wreath was awarded to victors in contests and battles. These three interpretations are not necessarily mutually incompatible.
The usual interpretation of the palm tree is that it was a type of visual pun intended to signify the minting authority, since the Greek word for palm tree, phoinix is also the Greek word for 'Phoenician/Punic'. This kind of visual pun, often known as a 'canting type', was common on classical Greek coinage, particularly in Sicily, where prominent examples appear at Himera, Selinus, Zancle, and Leontini. Edward Stanley Robinson challenged this interpretation, on the grounds that a Greek pun would be surprising on a Punic coin. However, Greek was widely known and spoken in the Carthaginian-controlled portion of Sicily; on several earlier Siculo-Punic coinages, the coin legends are in Greek. An alternative explanation is that the palm was a symbol of the sun god Baal Hammon — if he was a sun-god — but there is not much evidence for this, except that the palm was a symbol of the Greek sun god, Apollo, at Delos.
On sub-group E, two unusual double-tiered pots appear on the obverse in between the letters of the legend. These vessels are a type of incense burner or thymiaterion, which is commonly found in pottery assemblages at Punic sites from this period. Its presence may support attempts to read the iconography of these coins in terms of Carthaginian religion.
Mid-fourth century (c. 350/340 - 320/315 BC)
After a hiatus in minting, a new Carthaginian coinage began to be struck between 350 and 340 BC. This new coinage consisted of another series of silver tetradrachms, known as Series II, with four subgroups, which lasted until 320/315 BC. These coins have a female head on the obverse, modelled on the depictions of Kore and Arethusa on Syracusan coinage. The reverse usually has a horse standing still, with a palm tree behind it. The first issue has the legend QRTHDŠT, followed by M and BTW'L later in sub-group A, and by ḤB or BḤ in sub-group C.This was accompanied by a new gold coinage, Jenkins-Lewis, Group II, in two denominations, which was produced on a much larger scale than previous issues. It was followed by Jenkins-Lewis, Group III, the first large Carthaginian electrum issue, with nine subgroups, which began being minted some time after 350 BC and continued until around 320 BC. It consists of an overweight shekel of 9.4 g and a number of smaller denominations. Both Group II and III have same iconography: a female head modelled on Kore on the obverse and a horse on the reverse, without a palm tree or an inscriptions.
A set of bronze coins, SNG Cop. 94-98 were produced from around 350 to around 330 BC, in two denominations, with a male head on the obverse and a leaping horse on the reverse.
The impetus for this renewed minting seems to have been the Carthaginian interventions in eastern Sicily following the demise of Dionysius II's regime in Syracuse and then the Sixth Sicilian War against Timoleon. It was accompanied by renewed minting at a number of other Siculo-Punic centres, including 'Ṣyṣ', 'Ršmlqrt', Therma, and perhaps Solous.