Happy Father's Day to all those dad's who read this, FFIVN and I received this coin in the mail a few days ago from Europe from the most generous @Pavlos who held a contest back in April. @dougsmit won the coin but was kind enough to pass it on to FFIVN and I to work on together and add to our collection. With all of the COVID insanity, it took forever to make its way to us, but I gotta say, it was worth the wait! I had looked a few things up over the week while FFIVN did his online classes. Hopefully to help him along since, while we are pretty good at identifying Roman, some provincials, and to a lesser extent, Chinese cash coins, anything "Greek" is well, Greek to us. Well today being Father's Day, what better than to spend some time figuring this one out? We started out with trying to figure out what the images were. The obverse was fairly simple since I just purchased a Pontos, Amisos with the Gorgon head on the obverse and Nike on the reverse. We were able to guess that that is what our coin had, along with some wings on either side. The reverse was a bit tougher, but also gave us the best lead. We could make out the bird on the left (we thought it was an owl), assumed that it was a female riding a horse (we were wrong there) in the center, and underneath we were able to make out "ΣΟΛΕΩΝ" With those clues, we started our CoinTalk searches, Google-fu, and everything else we could thing of. The best we found was this coin on asiaminorcoins.com and then after searching around some more we decided that this is what our coin is. All told, it took us about an hour of good honest searching and I think we did a good job. It was a fun time spent reading and learning with my oldest son and I really appreciate the kindness of @Pavlos and @dougsmit for the coin and giving us the opportunity to spend some quality time together. Without further ado, here is the coin and our attribution. If we made any mistakes, please let us know. We are always striving to learn. If any of you received coins for Father's Day, feel free to post them here. Or other examples of our coin, or anything else relevant (or not!) Soloi-Pompeiopolis (Cilcia) AE27 11.89g 2nd-1st centuries BC Obverse: Winged gorgon facing in center of aegis. Reverse: Aphrodite, turreted, riding on galloping bull right, which she holds by the horns; eagle to left, ΣΟΛΕΩΝ below, monogram above and to left of Aphrodite.
Happy Father's Day, @furryfrog02, and well done on the identification, that galloping bull is certainly not obvious (horse? centaur?). Your coin with the owl behind, just eyeing the ones found in ACSearch, seems to be much less common than the variant with owl in front of the bull. Here's a coin that arrived in time for Father's day - the easier ID that you mention above: Pontos, Amisos, AE19 (7.96 g), time of Mithradates VI, c. 120-63 BC Obv: Aegis with Gorgoneion in centre. Rev: ΑΜΙ-ΣΟΥ, Nike advancing right holding wreath and palm; monogram to lower right
The reverse of this coin is not bad compared to what I find online but the bird on the left seems less common than an owl on the right. Sear 5619 shows the bird left. I am not convinced from the few/poor coins I've seen whether the reverse bull is being ridden or having it's head twisted as in bulldogging. Finding a high grade coin would help. If the coin were mine, I would feel obligated to find something about that scene as it relates to that city or region. For example, did they have a festival that involved bull-sports? Is there a historical connection with Aphrodite and bulls in the mythology of that region? I am spared all this work because the coin is not mine. Enjoy it and all the work that comes with the package. Identifying is only the first question to be addressed when we get a new coin.
Well done on the ID! The bird being on the left is indeed a lot less common then on the right. As Doug suggested, perhaps read a bit about the city/region and it's mythology, that will give you even more enjoyment than 1 hour . Soloi is a very interesting city with a broad range of different coins. I myself do not even know why they issued coins with the aegis and Aphrodite riding a bull. They seem to have especially worshiped Athena (a lot on their coins).
We definitely plan on reading about the city and the mythology associated with the coin. Identification is only the first step
