09/02/2026
Struck around 510–470 BC, this ancient silver nomos comes from Metapontion, a Greek city in southern Italy famous for its rich farmland—and its unmistakable coinage.
🌾 At the heart of the design is Metapontion’s iconic barley ear, a symbol of the agricultural wealth that helped the city prosper. The obverse shows the barley in bold relief alongside META, identifying the coin with the Metapontines.
But the reverse is what makes these early coins especially fascinating: the same barley ear appears incuse—sunken into the coin rather than raised.
This unusual minting technique is one of the defining features of the earliest coinage of Magna Graecia and makes pieces like this an important chapter in the development of Western coinage.
With beautiful silver-gray surfaces, deeper charcoal toning, and an unmistakably archaic character, this is more than an ancient coin—it’s a surviving piece of Greek history from nearly 25 centuries ago.
Would you add a Metapontion barley-ear nomos to your ancient collection?
📍http://beantowncoins.com/510-470-bc-lucania-metapontion-ar-nomos-barley-ear-incuse-7-98g-silver-metan.html
