Tiryns or Nemea, AR Hemidrachm, 2.51 g, c. end 4th century, or later. 

Obv: Head of the eponymous nymph Nemea to right, wearing 
taenia and with her hair flowing in locks down the back of 
her neck. 
Rev. Harpa above club, both to right; all within wreath of 
wild celery with ties below. 

BMC 47 (Argos). De Hirsch 1371 (Tiryns). McClean 6906 
(doubtfully Tiryns). Svoronos 1907, 1 and pl. II, 1-4 
(Tiryns). Traité III, 656 (Tiryns). Weber 4177 (Argos). 
Extremely rare. Very fine.

ex Seaby’s, October 1984 ("Larissa Cremaste"). 
This is one of the enigmas of Argive numismatics. It was long 
held to be from Argos, since the club and the harpa are 
constantly found as symbols on Argive coins and the wild 
celery wreath (often termed a parsley wreath) is closely 
associated with Nemea (as noted below, note to lot 1074). 
The head on the obverse is generally termed that of a nymph, 
but the fact that the hair is bound with a taenia shows that 
it must be Nemea, who wears one in her rare depictions in 
Greek art. Svoronos reattributed the coins of this type to 
the Tirynthians who, after their expulsion from Tiryns, settled 
in Halieis (Halikos) but insisted on keeping their old name. 
In fact, there seems no reason to accept this reattribution 
because the coinage has no link whatsoever with the certain 
coinage of the Tirynthians, either in type or fabric. But, 
of course, it has almost no link with the coinage of Argos 
either! The wreath is, however, the key as it clearly points 
to Nemea. If so, we may be able to see this as a very 
limited coinage struck to commemorate Argive control of the 
games in the late 4th century. The only problem with this 
chronology is that, as Forrer pointed out in his brief comment 
on the Weber piece, the style looks later. In that case, we 
might think of placing this special coinage after c. 271, 
when the games were finally moved to Argos; Grose also 
perceptively pointed out (McClean p. 466, note 1) that the 
style "does not appear to be much earlier than circa 250 B.C." 

Courtesy of LHS Numismatik AG, Switzerland, auction 2006