I wasn't sure where to post this thread but Ancient Coins seemed to be the best place. Many years ago I bought this medal at a Johnson & Jensen Medal auction & kept it because of the beautiful portrait of Minerva, see photos below. The medal was struck at the Paris Mint, designed by Rambert Dumarest (1750-1806), & presented to a famous playwright, Henri Meilhac, in 1888. The medal is silver, weighs 65.08 gm, is 50 mm in diameter, is struck in high relief, & blessed with a fine patina. The Roman goddess Minerva & the Greek goddess Athena are one in the same, however, the Romans didn't stress her attributes of battle & warfare like the Greeks did, instead they focused on her attributes of science, art & trade. One thing that always puzzled me was the spelling of Meilhac's first name on this medal as HENRY instead of Henri, as he was known at that time. Could this be an engravers error? Silver presentation medals from the French Institute are quite rare & bronze specimens are not common either. Neither Johnson or Jensen could offer a plausible explanation for the spelling on the medal, but did stand by their attribution. Do CoinTalk members have any thoughts on this?
Reason for subtle snake on helmet and snakes on toga? Unless it's a hint at Athena turning Medusa into the snake haired monster.
The snake on her helmet may be Skylla, the snake-bodied sea monster frequently depicted as adorning her helmet, as on this beyond-my-budget example at Nomos: And Athena/Minerva is typically depicted as wearing the aegis, which is decorated with snakes. You may read more about this in a thread I posted about a year ago.
Roman Collector, that's a gorgeous stater from Nomos & an interesting explanation of the snakes seen on so many depictions of Athena/Minerva.
I have retrieved the epitaph of his tomb that confirm the spelling of your medal. https://anetcha-parisienne.blogspot.com/2011/05/?view=classic To Henry Meilhac member of the French Academy testimony of sincere admiration and affectionate trust this memorial was erected by a friend 1900 L. Dauvergne architect Henry seems to be the right spelling. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Meilhac Jut the title mentioned Henri. During the rest of the article Henry is used. I imagine the principle operated as a neologism.
Beautiful medal. Meilhac would not be the first to have a French spelling changed to the English version for convenience. Edmond Dulac is also known as Edmund Dulac, for example. So my guess is he used both spellings, not a typo (or "engrave-o").
