SINOPE in PAPHLAGONIA 490BC Eagle Square Ancient Silver Greek Coin i52220

Item: i52220

Authentic Ancient

Coin of:

Greek city of
Sinope
 in
Paphlagonia

Silver Drachm 15mm (6.16 grams) Struck circa 490-425 B.C.
Reference: HGC 7, 384; SNG Black Sea 1359-1365
Crude eagle head left, with indication of leg below; dolphin below.
Quadrapartite incuse square with diagonal quarters filled; pellet in stippled
sunken quarters.

Sinope was a colony of Miletos,
founded in the 7th century B.C. According to the mythological founding of the
city, the city was named after an Amazon or the nymph daughter of the River
Asopos. Sinope became the most important city on the
southern coastline of the Black Sea. The city drew it’s wealth from rich tuna
fisheries, trade in grain and even timber, olives and metals acquired from
dependent colonies further east.  The walled city was located on an isthmus
jutting out into the Euxine Sea. The city is historically known for having been
destroyed, rebuilt and having changed hands between many owners over the years,
including Mithradates the Great and the Romans during the time of Julius Caesar.
It was eventually a free city under the Romans.

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Sinop is a city with a population of 36,734 on
İnce Burun
(İnceburun,
Cape Ince
), by its
Cape Sinop
(Sinop
Burnu,
Boztepe Cape
,
Boztepe Burnu
) which is situated on the most
northern edge of the Turkish side of
Black Sea
coast, in the ancient region of
Paphlagonia
, in modern-day northern
Turkey
, historically known as Sinope. It
is the capital of
Sinop Province
.

 History

Long used as a
Hittite
port which appears in Hittite sources
as “Sinuwa” (J. Garstang, The Hittite Empire, p. 74), the city proper was
re-founded as a
Greek
colony from the city of
Miletus
in the 7th century BC (Xenophon,
Anabasis 6.1.15;
Diodorus Siculus
14.31.2;
Strabo
12.545). Sinope flourished as the Black
Sea port of a caravan
route that led from the upper
Euphrates
valley (Herodotus
1.72; 2.34), issued its own coinage, founded colonies, and gave its name to a
red arsenic sulfate
mined in Cappadocia, called “Sinopic
red earth” (Miltos Sinôpikê) or
sinople
.

Sinope escaped Persian domination until the early 4th century BC, and in 183
BC it was captured by
Pharnaces I
and became capital of the kingdom
of Pontus
.
Lucullus
conquered Sinope for Rome in 70 BC,
and Julius Caesar established a Roman colony there, Colonia Julia Felix, in 47
BC.
Mithradates Eupator
was born and buried at
Sinope, and it was the birthplace of
Diogenes
, of
Diphilus
, poet and actor of the New Attic
comedy
, of the historian Baton, and of the
Christian heretic of the 2nd century AD,
Marcion
.

It remained with the Eastern Roman Empire or the
Byzantines
. It was a part of the
Empire of Trebizond
from the sacking of
Constantinople
by the
Fourth Crusade
in 1204 until the capture of the
city by the
Seljuk Turks
of
Rûm
in 1214.

After 1261, Sinop became home to two successive independent
emirates
following the fall of the Seljuks: the
Pervâne
and the
Candaroğlu
. It was captured by the
Ottomans
in 1458.

In November 1853, at the start of the
Crimean War
, in the
Battle of Sinop
, the
Russians
, under the command of Admiral
Nakhimov
, destroyed an Ottoman frigate squadron
in Sinop, leading Britain and France to declare war on Russia.

Sinop hosted a US military base that was important for intelligence during
the cold war era. The US base was closed in 1992.

Explorer Bob Ballard discovered an ancient ship wreck north west of Sinop in
the Black Sea and was shown on National Geographic.