Mythological menagerie... post your coins with beasts and monsters of legend!

I don't remember seeing a thread for mythical beasts on coins, so I thought I'd get one started. Let's see what sort of fabled animals, monsters, or hybrids we can find both on ancients and moderns. Monstrous but otherwise human emperors, kings, queens, heads of state don't count.

Here's a sphinx from ancient Spain :



IBERIA, Castulo
AE26 (13.18g, 26mm)
Late 3rd century BC
ACIP 2112; CNH 7; SNG BM Spain 1230-1.
O: Diademed male head right.
R: Sphinx standing right, raising forepaw, star to right, KASTILO (in Iberian script).
Ex Archer M. Huntington Collection

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

A pegasus from Corinth :



CORINTHIA, Corinth
AR Stater
Circa 375 - 300 BC
Calciati Pegasi 402, BCD Corinth 115.
O: Pegasus flying left, Q (koppa) below.
R: Head of Athena wearing Corinthian helmet left, A below chin, Thessalian helmet behind.
Ex Demetrios Armounta Collection

 

Those Spanish sphinx are so distinctive. I'm actively on the hunt for one. Yours is very nice.

Here's one of my best coins, with Pegasus.

 

Chimera:

SIKYONIA, Sikyon
AR Stater
335-330 BC

11.94 grams, 23.2 mm
Obv: Chimera advancing left, paw raised, wreath above, ΣΕ below.
Rev: Dove flying left, I left, all within olive wreath.
Grade: a gVF nicely toned coin.
Other: Sikyon mint. BCD Peloponnesos 219, Traité III 776, BCD Peloponnesos pg 40, 56. SNG Cop 48 var (N instead of I). Ex CNG auction 312 lot 88 originating from a 1930’s collection.

 

Here is a Sphinx on a 1956 Egypt 20-Piastres. This silver coin is somewhere between the size of a US half dollar & US silver dollar.

 

Thanks, TIF. Distinctive is the word I'd use too... for me these coins always stand out. Hope you get yourself a nice one.

And I saw what you did with that Corinth stater of yours and its Silenus the satyr control mark... two mythological beasts in one coin! Very nice indeed.

 

Love this coin! Really need to get myself one of them.

 

Collect, I really love that coin and have been actively looking for one of my own

Here's an assortment of Klazomenai winged boars, Pigasus if you will



From http://www.theoi.com/Ther/HusKlazomenaios.html :

Aelian, On Animals 12. 38 (trans. Scholfield) (Greek natural history C2nd A.D.) :
"I have heard that on Klazomenai [and island west of Smyrna] there was a Sow with wings, and it ravaged the territory of Klazomenai. And Artemon records this in his Annals of Klazomenai. That is why there is a spot named and celebrated as `The Place of the Winged Sow,’ and it is famous. But if anyone regards this as myth, let him do so."

 

Beasts & Monsters => man, I can't wait to get home to my coins!!

 

There were a couple of very nice Klazomenai pigasus diobols in yesterday's CNG auction. I saw that at least one CT statesman was bidding. Did any of you end up with one of those wonderful coins? I considered bidding but am holding back, trying instead to find Pigasus examples from the remaining issuing cities.

Here's a drachm from Samos which I was very happy to get for a reasonable hammer.



And a lucky eBay find courtesy of a friend's sharp eye, a Pigasus obol from Rhodos (Rhodes). Not the usual Helios/rose!

 

From the same eBay score, the lot was a two-fer. A winged man-headed bull from somewhere in Caria. Looks rather like a mutant mosquito.

 

A gorgon from Apollonia Pontika.

 

From Syracuse, Sicily, a hippocamp.

 

Here is a Hippocampus on a 1960 Greece 20 drachmai.

 

The Phoenix is a mythological bird that lived for many years and then burned itself to death on a pyre from whose ashes another phoenix arose. The Phoenix is depicted on some coins from Japan including this 1958 100 yen coin.

 

Byblos 1/8 shekel c.330 BC with hippocamp under a galley but I like the normal animals having lunch on the reverse.


Gallienus has a lot of monsters:
another hippocamp


gryphon


centaur with lyre


Others? Real animals don't count.

Finally my favorite monster is this Republican medusa. There are many heads with snakes or bad grins but few are really scary.

 

Here is a Gallienus Pegasos:

 

Not mythological, but quite beastly.

 

That's a horse, not a hippocampus. Hippocampi don't have rear legs...

 

I do believe brg5658 is correct on this one.