Dear Friends of ancient mythology! I often only use coins as a starting point for further investigations. So I did it here, too. Pygmies rarely appear on Roman coins. I only know of a Denarius of L. Roscus Fabatus, Cr. 412/1, symbols 69. All the more I was pleased to be able to acquire this coin from Alexandria showing a dancing Pygmy on the rev: The Coin: Egypt, Alexandria, Diocletian, AD 284-305 Billon-Tetradrachm, 7.51g, 19mm, 210° struck AD 291/2 (RY 8) obv. ΔIOKΛHTI - ANOC CEB Bust, draped, laureate, r. rev. Horus (Harpokrates), stg. facing, wearing hemhem-crown, nude except chlamys over shoulders, holding branch in lowered r. hand and pomegranate in raised l. hand; at his l. side the small figur of a dancing Pygmy. in l. and r. field L - H (year 8) ref. Milne 5021; Emmett 4062; Curtis 2005 about VF, interesting rev. type pedigree: ex coll. Zach Beasley (Beast Coins) 2009 ex coll. Keith Emmett ex Harlan Berk Oct. 1991 Name and origin: The Pygmies were a fabulous dwarf people who, according to Homer, were living in the far north on the edge of the ocean. Her name, Greek Pygmaios, comes from Greek πυγμη (= fist), which corresponds to the distance from the elbow to the hand as a measure of length, and therefore resembles the Latin cubitus. The Pygmies are still so misshapen to their smallness that the head occupies the third part of the whole body. Pliny says that they would have housed egg shells. It was believed that they were descendants from Pygmaios, son of Doros and grandson of Epaphos, (Steph. Byz.) . The Geranomachy: An old, already prehomeric legend tells that the Pygmies were in an eternal war with the Cranes, their deadly enemies. Every autumn the Cranes flew northwards to the Okeanos and attacked the Pygmies. In this Crane combat, the Geranomachy, the Pygmies, who were hardly the same in size as them, even though armed, usually were defeated and killed by the Cranes. In his Metamorphoses Ovid mentions a Pygmy mother who dared to deal with the goddess Juno in a competition; after her defeat she was turned by Juno into a Crane and then had to fight on the side of the cranes against her own people. According to a version handed down by the mythograph Antoninus Liberalis (Metamorphoses) the beautiful and proud Pygmy was called Oinoe; after her transformation into a Crane she first remained in the region, because she did not want to part with her human son Nikodamas, but was then driven away by him and the Pygmies, and this was the origin of the hereditary hostility between Pygmies and Cranes. The legend of the Pygmies has been amplified on several occasions, including in the way that Lemuel Gulliver talks about the Lilliputians; Hekataios tells, they had done agriculture and the single stalks cut down with axes. This is where the funny contrast belongs, in which the fine arts placed them to Heracles. We know of a pic where a Pygmy puts a ladder to the Mug of Heracles to be able to drink out of it. Philostratos (Icon.) describes the following event: Heracles after his victory over Antaios, was sleeping exhausted on the sand of Africa.The Pygmies, to avenge Antaios, attack him. An army heap advances against the left hand of the hero, two other heaps against the right. The feet are attacked by the archers and the slingers. The heap, which attacked the head of Herakles with storm ladders was commanded by the king of the Pygmies himself. In the meantime Herakles awakens, laughs, wraps His Majesty and the other war heroes into his lion's skin and walks away with them. The Pygmies and Egypt: Later writers put the Pygmies usually to the sources of the Nile, where the Cranes annually came from Scythia to fight against the Pygmies for the seed. Aristoteles doesn't took this reports for fabulous but accepts them as people from Upper Egypt, holding rather small horses and living in caves (Aristot. Hist. An.). Strabon reports that there are two kinds of Pygmies, five spans long and three spans long, and that it were only the three span long little men who were at war with the Cranes. Even later there is the talk about Nordic Pygmies who lived in the region of Thule, very small sized, short-living and armored with needle-like spears (Eust. ad Hom.). Finally there is the talk of Indian Pygmies who lived subterraneously on the other side of the river Ganges (e.g. Plinius H.N.) Sometimes the war of the Egyptian Pygmies against the Cranes was explained to that effect that the Pygmies were symbols of the cubiti of the Nile flood, which at the time when the Cranes came from the North, was fallen down. Therefore we see sixteen Pygmies on the famous sculpture of the Nile in the Bracchio Nuovo of the Vaticane, which indicate the required water level of the Nile. On coins showing the Nile depicted as Iς (= 16). The special relation between Harpokrates (Horus) and the Pygmies deserves a further study. I couldn't find anything about it. Ranke-Graves assumed that the myth of the Pygmies reflects an historic event: the extrusion of a native farmer population in the Upper Nile Valley of short stature by pastoral people of higher stature who liked to stand on one leg only and so have made the look of Cranes. History of Art: The Geranomachia has inspired the imagination of many Greek, Etruscan and Roman Artists. It was depicted as tragicomical and entertaining motive on vases, drinking vessels, wall paintings and cameos. It was interpreted as parody of the heroic legends. Even statuaries, reliefs, mosaics and lamps show Pygmies. Various attempts have been made to account for the singular belief in the existence of such a dwarfish nation, but it seems to have its origin in the love of the marvellous, and the desire to imagine human beings, in different climes and in different ages, to be either much greater or much smaller than ourselves. I have added three pics: (1) The pic of an Attic red-figured vase, ascribed to the Brygos painter, today in the Heremitage in St. Petersburg. It shows a Pygmy warrior fighting against a crane. He has grasped his neck and has raised a club to hit his head. (2) The pic of a fresco from the House of the Doctor in Pompeji, AD 60. It shows the rural life of the Pygmies at the Nile. (3) The pic of the colossal statue of the Nile from the Bracchio Nuovo of the the Vaticane. This statue was found in Rome near the church S. Maria sopra Minerva and acquired by the Vaticane according to the suggestion of Jacob Burckhardt (my own coll.) Sources: (1) Homer, Ilias (2) Ovid, Metamorphosen (3) www.theoi.com (4) http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_pygmies.htm (5) Vollmer Griechische Mythologie, 1874 (6) Benjamin Hederich, Gründliche Mythologie, 1770 (used by Goethe!) (7) Der Kleine Pauly (8) Wikipedia Best regards
Interesting. The "pygmy" on the Attic vase you showed isn't really a pygmy, or it isn't a pygmy in the modern sense of the word. The Attic vase depicts an achondroplastic dwarf (short stature, disproportionately short limbs) whereas "pygmies" are people of short stature but normally proportioned limbs. I'm going to have to think about all of this. When is a small person on a coin deemed a "pygmy" versus something else? Why is this coin of Diocletian said to have a "dancing pygmy" yet on the coins showing Nilus in a pose similar to the statue the small people are generally labeled as "genii"?
Many ancient coins show a figure proportionally large or small often due to different status. How are we to ID a small figure as 'Pigmy' rather than just less important? Are all those falling horsemen little people or just lesser in significance than that big Roman?
@TIF The description of the Attiv Vase is not from me but from theoi.com and seems to be the description from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. And what other little people should fight against the cranes? @dougsmit The description as Pygmy on the coin is not from me but I have it from Milne, Catalogue of Alexandrian Coins, 1933, p. 139. Who am I to doubt his description? Best regards
You are someone who has spent a great deal of time researching the meaning behind the iconography on provincial coins with mythological reverses . Sometimes old catalogs are wrong. Sometimes old scholarship is wrong. I was just wondering why you think Milne and others deemed the diminutive figure on your Diocletian tetradrachm a pygmy, why is the pygmy "dancing" (is it dancing?), and what is the association with Harpokrates?
FYI, the famed dancing "pygmy" of King Pepi II...(circa 2250 B.C.) Letter from the king to Harkhuf the traveler “You have said in your letter that you have come down in safety from Yam with the army and brought many beautiful gifts which Hathor, Lady of Yamu, has given to the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. You also say in this letter that you have brought a dwarf of divine dances from the land of the horizon-dwellers. Like the dwarf whom the Treasurer of the God, Baurded, brought from Punt in the time of King Isesi. You say to my Majesty, Never before has one like him been brought by any other who has visited Yam. Each year you do what your lord desires – spending day and night with the caravan. Now come northward at once to the Court. You must bring the dwarf, alive, sound and well to rejoice and gladden the heart of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. When he comes down with you into the ship, appoint reliable people who shall be beside him on each side of the vessel and take care lest he should fall into the water. When he sleeps at night, appoint trustworthy people who shall sleep beside him. Inspect him ten times a night because my Majesty desires to see this dwarf more than the all products of Sinai and Punt. If you arrive at the Court and the dwarf is with you, alive, and well, my Majesty will make you many excellent honours to be an ornament for the son of your son for ever. All the people will say when they hear what my Majesty does for you: “Is there anything like this which was done for the privy counsellor Harkhuf, when he came down from Yam.”
I should add that the letter comes from the Tomb of Harkhuf, shown below The inscription referring to the pygmy is on the far right of the tomb, consisting of 26 lines of hieroglyphs at Qubbet el-Hawa.
