Stater of Nectanebo II

Egyptian kings began minting their own coins only during the fourth century B.C., considerably later than their Greek and Persian neighbors. This rare stater is one of a small number of surviving gold coins issued by Nectanebo II, the last native ruler of Egypt until modern times. Nectanebo's gold staters differ markedly from earlier pharaonic coins, which imitated the widely circulated coins of Athens and their depictions of Athena and her owl. Here instead the front, or obverse, shows a spirited horse prancing to the right. An explicitly Egyptian image, in the form of two superimposed hieroglyphs, occupies the reverse. The heart and windpipe represent the word nefer or "good", while the pectoral with six pendants stands for nub, literally, "gold". The expression "good gold" asserts the genuine gold content, and thus the validity, of the coin.