profile

横顔　—　Reading

A face seen from the side. Most coin portraits are like this.

Decadrachm of SyracuseLate 5th century BC Lysimachos Tetradrachm297–281 BC Teston of Henry II1550

In profile, a person can be identified by their outline alone. On a small circle, this was a form that could be distinguished even with a shallow engraving. This is an example of how a technical constraint determined a format that would last for two thousand years.