By Steve Benner for CoinWeek ….. Pamphylia was not a country unto itself but a region. It is located on the southern coast of Asia Minor (Modern Turkey) surrounded by Lycia to the west, Cilicia to the east, and Pisidia to the north. In ancient Greek, Pamphylia meant “of mingled tribes or races”, and […]
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By Steve Benner for CoinWeek ….. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 * * * This article is the second part on the coinage of Troas, a region of northwest Asia Minor adjacent to the Hellespont. Its history goes back to the Bronze Age and the Hittites, and Troy (Ilium), […]
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By Steve Benner for CoinWeek ….. Troas, unlike the subject of my previous article, was not a country unto itself. It was only the name of a district in northwest Asia Minor (Anatolia) adjacent to the Hellespont (Dardanelles). The area is bordered by the Aegean Sea to the west, the mountain massif that forms Mount […]
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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz …… IN 2007, CANADA captured a world record by producing five examples of a 100-kilogram gold piece (220.5 pounds, or a bit over 3215 troy ounces). It was 53 centimeters in diameter (21 inches) and three centimeters thick, denominated at one million Canadian dollars. “Why did the Royal […]
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By Steve Benner for CoinWeek ….. Kephallenia is the sixth-largest island of Greece and the largest in the Ionian Sea. It is located opposite the Gulf of Corinth (Figure 1). The island was associated with the city of Elis on the mainland but functioned independently. Kephallenia is about 31 miles long and 20 to three […]
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By Nicholas Fritz – Numismatist, World and Ancient Coins, Stack’s Bowers Galleries …… No ancient Greek city-state captures the modern imagination quite like Athens. Though the whole of the ancient Greek world is known as “the Cradle of Western Civilization”, it is Athens that has come to symbolize the fullest fruition of reason and democracy […]
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By Peter van Alfen for American Numismatic Society (ANS) …… On the bills and coins that we use today, we recognize the link between the words and images that appear on the objects and the powers that issued them. Images of dead presidents and inscriptions like “United States of America” point to the authority of […]
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By Michael T. Shutterly for CoinWeek ….. A long time ago, the goddess Athena purchased the naming rights to the town now known as Athens. Coins had not yet been invented so Athena could not pay cash for the naming rights, but she did have something valuable to offer instead: she gave the Athenians the […]
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By Steve Benner for CoinWeek ….. The northern coast of the Black Sea (Euxine Sea), which is southern Ukraine and Russia today, was considered to be at the extreme edge of the ancient Greek world. The area was settled during the great colonization period of Greek history in the eighth through sixth centuries BCE. […]
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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek ….. Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed. ― G.K. Chesterton, a la Criminal Minds (CBS, 2007) CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY IS FILLED with monsters. For the civilizations of the ancient […]
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By Mike Markowitz for CoinWeek…. NOW AND THEN IN HISTORY, economic, political and social forces come together in just the right combination to make a particular city the dynamic locus of cultural creativity. We see this in Athens in the time of Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BCE), Florence during the Renaissance (c. 1350 – 1450 […]
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CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series by Mike Markowitz… THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN TUSCANY before the Romans are often described as “enigmatic” or “mysterious.” We know them as “Etruscans”[1] from the name that the Romans called them; they called themselves “Rasna.” The last speakers of the Etruscan language probably died out in the first century of […]
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