This silver didrachm depicts a sniffing hound and a beautiful head of the nymph Egesta. Around the nymph's head it reads in Greek letters 'Egestaion'. This is Segesta on Sicily, the city in which, towards the end of the 5th century BC, this didrachm was minted.
Legend has it that the river god Crimisos, in the guise of a dog, and Egesta produced a son. This was Aigestes, who later founded Segesta on Monte Varvaro in western Sicily. The images on our coin thus tell the town's founding legend.