Category: Early Coinage & Archaic Greece

This small and unassuming coin is one of the first issues of Cnidus, a city on the southern coast of Asia Minor. It was settled by colonists from Sparta around 650 BC, but the colonists departed from their forefathers’ warlike nature and turned towards less hostile practices. There was a medical school from at least…

Near the middle of the Archaic Period (ca. 8th century BC), around the time of the possibly fictitious epic poet Homer, the Greeks began to set out from their mainland in search of founding new colonies. Some went north towards the Black Sea, some went southeast to Libya, and others went as far as southern France…

With Greece still a group of relatively weak, fragmented city-states in the Late Archaic Period, Cyprus was dominated by Middle Eastern powers. First, the mighty Neo-Assyrian empire conquered the island under Sargon II (r. 721-705 BC). The island was inhabited by a polyglot mix of ethnic Greeks, Syrians, and Egyptians; while most of the names…

The conventional interpretation is that the satyr is carrying off the nymph on the left, who protests by raising her right hand. However, a reassessment of this type in recent years has led to the hypothesis that the action taking place is not, in fact, unconsensual, and the two figures are engaging in a ritualistic…

But Alyattes saw the other side of the coin, which the Ionians had simply left blank, as a place to not only distinguish his issues but also to project state and personal power. His design was to feature two lion heads facing each other, with his name in Lydian script