301-281 BCE
AE 9mm 0.81g
Helmeted head of Athena right, wearing crested Attic helmet decorated with a wreath /
IΛ-I; hydria.
Bellinger T3; SNG Cop 346
Perhaps no other city evokes so much emotion and history as Ilion, better known in English as Troy. Nearly every Greek legend has some connection to it.
So famous was the ancient city that even during Hellenistic times it was a tourist attraction. Alexander the Great himself made a point of visiting it. The tour was more than personal, since he wanted to forge a connection between the two invasions and, more importantly, between himself and Achilles.
Alexander paid homage at Achilles’ tomb and took part in the Greek traditions of anointing himself with oil and running naked with his companions. He also made the city exempt from taxes and supposedly at the end of his life promised to rebuild the temple to Athena as the largest in the world.
After his visit, the city increased in prominence. The city at that time was more of a blip that sufficiently annoyed modern archeologists by reusing the stones from important buildings that remained from the famed siege of troy for their own projects.
One of those buildings was a temple to Athena, who is depicted on the obverse of this coin. This temple was built roughly when this coin was minted and severely damaged the site of ancient Troy.
This coin was minted during the period when Ilion was under the control of Lysimachos.