Tetradrachm

テトラドラクマ ／ tetradrachm　—　Names of money

A four-drachma silver coin. The Athenian owl became the most imitated coin of antiquity.

Gorgoneion TetradrachmCirca 510–507 BC Early Owl Tetradrachmc. 500-480 BC Owl Tetradrachm5th century BC (Classical period)

A silver coin equivalent to four drachmae. The 5th century BC Athenian "owl" was favoured throughout the eastern Mediterranean and became the most imitated coin of antiquity. Kroll notes, however, that what first spread in the Aegean as a kind of international trade currency was the gold of Croesus. In Alexandria under Roman rule, billon tetradrachms with a reduced silver content continued to be struck for about three hundred years.

⚠ After two thousand five hundred years, the owl from the 5th century BC design returned as the basis for Greece's one-euro coin.