Page:Origin of metallic currency and weight standards.djvu/336

 the value of the double-headed. If then the kettle and tripod of Homeric times are found as symbols on the coins of Crete, why may not the axe on those of Tenedos represent the local unit of an earlier epoch? and that such axes were evidently an important article in Tenedos is proved by the dedication at Delphi.

Coin of Phanes (earliest known inscribed coin).

But could we only find a contemporary description of the type on one of the earliest coins of Asia Minor, the cradle of the art of coining, we might get our ideas on the nature of the coin types greatly cleared. Fortunately such an opportunity is afforded to us by an unique coin in the British Museum, the oldest as yet known which bears an inscription. It is an oblong electrum coin (Fig. 35), the reverse having the usual incuse, but on its obverse it bears a stag feeding, and over it runs (retrograde) in archaic letters ([Greek: Phanos emi sema = Phanous eimi sêma). There can be no doubt that the mark of Phanes is the stag. If there was no inscription it would have been at once asserted that the stag was the symbol of the goddess Artemis, and who could deny it? But as it stands it is plain that the stag is nothing more than the particular badge adopted by the potentate Phanes, when and where he may have reigned, as a guarantee of the weight of the coin and perhaps the purity of the metal. The Daric itself needs no inscription to tell us that its type is not religious. The figure of the Great King with his spear and bow and quiver can hardly be allegorized even by an Origen. Emboldened by these instances we may even hold up our hands against the host of Heaven, and raise doubts as to whether the foreparts of the