New Electrum Gorgon

My contribution is a worn fourree stater of Neapolis, Macedon Circa 500-480 BC. High grade, solid ones of these are real beauties usually weighing a bit under 10g. but mine is a 7.9g ghost purchased from Fred Shore in 1990. Who has a solid one? Is it on anyone's want list? I would love to have one. They sell for the price of popular things like owls but are ten times as ugly and a hundred times more scarce.

https://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=96547

 

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You are talking about Gianpaolo Italiano’s Faciem Orribilem: La Medusa Sulla Monetazione Greca (2001). It has many pictures but they are printed in random sizes.

 

That's it. Thank you!

 

This type is near the top of my want list. I have yet to pull the trigger. Like you I have a fourree. Your fourree is a gem compared to mine. Mine has lost a great deal of its plating and has a largish hole on the left side. I wonder about the placement of the hole. I assume it was for jewelry and that the placement is purposeful. (I would have put the hole elsewhere.)


I have an archaic drachm. These are quite scarce!

MACEDON. Neapolis. AR Drachm (3.90 gms), circa 525-480 BC?
Obv: Head of Gorgon facing, tongue outstretched.
Rev: Quadripartite incuse square.
Same punch as SNG ANS 420-421. Perhaps a die match for Svoronos, L'hellénisme primitif de la Macédoine plate 9 #39 page 74

 

Yours is a gorgeous Drachm. Congrats, wonderful capture!

 

@Ed Snible What do you think of Reid's argument that all gorgons on coinage represent Medusa?

 

There were only three named gorgons. Reid is almost certainly correct that we are unlikely to see Medusa's two sisters on coins. They weren't important. There was also a belief that Medusa got her snakes from a curse by Athena. The sisters would not have been cursed. (Ovid believed this.)

The coin image might be more metaphorical than an actual depiction of a monster. For example, it might represent the aegis that Athena wore and thus her symbolic protection of the city. Of course, Athena's aegis was a gift from Perseus and made from the Medusa's head. Yet elsewhere Zeus has the aegis as a baby.

Back in the 1950s J. H. Croon noticed that many of the mints that struck "gorgon" types were near natural hot springs. A hot spring may seem to be an entrance to Hades ... which Homer said has a phantom gorgon. Medusa? I am not sure.

Coins with gorgons started in the 520s BC if not earlier, and kept going until 270 AD. The Greek legends varied from city to city and the coins were not just struck by Greeks. Perhaps everyone knew the story we know today. Perhaps some die cutters just thought it was a scary mask and didn't even know the story.

 

I have never seen one of those before. It looks flat-out amazing! Thank you for enlightening me to its existence.

 

Marvelous coin @Nicholas Molinari!