Sicily. Panormos (as Ziz). Siculo-Punic Coinage, circa 400-380 BC. Didrachm (Silver, 20.13 mm, 8.33 g). Horse prancing right; above, 'sys' in Punic characters. Rev. Male head right, with two dolphins swimming in front and with a crayfish swimming behind. Jenkins, SNR 50 (1971), p. 39, pl. 6, 12-13 var. (O1/R-, two reverse dies with three dolphins, no crayfish). SNG Lloyd -. SNG Copenhagen -. SNG ANS -. HGC 2, 1033 var. (reverse die with three dolphins, no crayfish). Toned, with faint traces of a few deposits. Of fine style. Near Extremely Fine. Unpublished, of a type that is in itself Extremely Rare, and without precedents known to us. 

From a Swiss collection, formed before 2005.

In the series of Siculo-Punic didrachms attributed by G.K. Jenkins to Panormos-Sis, depictions of crayfishes beside the head are not lacking, although in those cases the head is female rather than male (Jenkins, SNR 50, 1971, pl. 6, 2 and 5). Undoubtedly, our specimen is aligned with this issues, which draw upon the iconography of well-known Sicilian coinages such as Segesta and Syracuse, and it therefore stands as a noteworthy unpublished piece, a fascinating new addition to the corpus of Carthaginian domination in Sicily.