So I recently came across this weird looking coin during one of my online session of window shopping, the coin had incuse and a blob described as a stylised eagle head. Picture from WildWinds. I looked further, but almost every coin had this blob looking figure even at mint state, except this one from Vcoins that at least resembled an eagle. But I still wondered if the mint really wanted to just show an eagle, or something more. So I went on google maps to look at the city of Sinop, Turkey. And lo and behold, with it's narrow isthmus and triangular peninsula, it exactly looks like the stylised head of eagle as portrayed on coins!! So, could the 'eagle' be an actual map of the city/land itself? What do you guys think?
There has been 5 or 6 large groups just like you show in group lots in European auctions the last few months. I didn't buy any since I was not liking the artistry myself. If at least some of the would have looked like the second coin I might have bought a group.
There are examples that look like birds: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=8534633 There are examples with the blob, but the blob has an eye: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=8534632 The blob's eye is too simple. It doesn't look like a bird of prey. However, the Greeks were still struggling to do forward-facing eyes at that point. You could perhaps convince me that the blob-with-eye was some species of fish. Not sure about a map.
I mean it's not far fetched given some ancient coins actually showed a bird's eye view of their lands, like this Achaemenid tetradrachm depicting relief map of Ephesos.
