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Message:: [QUOTE="Jochen1, post: 3448939, member: 103829"]Dear Friends of ancient mythology! Here I have the next mythological interesting coin. I know its conservation is not exceeding F+ but in EF this type is hardly affordable. It is said this type is extremely rare, only about a Dozen known! The Coin:Thrace, Mesambria, Gordian III & Tranquillina, AD 241-244AE 27, 13.2g, 26.78mm, 180°obv. AVT K M ANT ΓOPΔIANOC AV CEB / TPANKVΛΛIN (AV ligate)Confronted busts of Gordian III, draped and laureate, r., and Tranquillina, drapedand diademed, l.rev. [MECAM] - BPIANΩNTwo Kuretes, helmeted, in short chiton and boots, performing the Pyrrhic dance.Standing turned away, but looking at each other, holding each a round shieldabove the head and beating with short swords against it.ref. Varbanov 4186; Karajatov (2001) 111; SNG Fitzwilliam 1560very rare, F+, dark green Patina[ATTACH=full]915965[/ATTACH] Mythology:This coin leads us to the great Creation Myths of the Olympic gods. Like many others Zeus was the son of Rhea and Kronos. Because Kronos frightened to be displaced by his children he was gorging them. When he must spew them out because Rhea has given him a stone wrapped up in a napkin to gorge she escaped with the little Zeus to Crete where she hides him in a cave of the Ida Mountains. To mask the crying of the infant to Kronos, the Kuretes were performing a clanking weapon dance in front of the cave with shields and swords. So Zeus was saved. Where the Kuretes came and who they are is not absolute clear. Sometimes it is said they are autochthon, sometimes the children of Rhea or of the Idaic Daktyles. Usually they were 2 or 3 Kuretes but sometimes 9, 10 or at least 52! In historic times the cult of the Kuretes was known in whole Greece in connection with the cult of Rhea. Its ceremonies are mainly the perfomance of the Pyrrhic Dance (Greek pyrrhiche) by priests to the companionship of hymns and flute musique. This should simulate the original deeds of the Kuretes. A problem is arising from the fact that this dance has a strong simularity to the dances of the Korybantes. These are known as attendants of the Great Mother Kybele. In the beginning these two were strictly differentiated; the dance of the Korybantes was much more orgiastic, the dance of the Kuretes more moderate. But with the diffusion of the Kybele cult to Greece both are mixed together. Therefore it is difficult to discriminate between the various names under which these deities appear. A plausible theory from Georg Kaibel, Göttingen 1901, is seeing the Kuretes together with the Korybantes, the Kabires, the Idaic Daktyles and Telchines only as names for the same entities at different times and different places. Kabel suggests that they have a phallic meaning too and that they were in the beginning primitive fertility deities which have sunk to an indeterminate and subordinate position due to the development and formalization of the greek religion. So in historic times they have survived only as half divine, half demonic beings which were worshipped only in connection to the various forms of the great Goddess of Nature. Background:Kuretes = 'Youth, young warrior', a demonized collective of a primitive 'male society' with hoplitic and artistic-orchestral orientation in the region of Greece and Asia Minor, as armed attendance of the Anatolic Mothergoddess a male equivalent to the Amazones. On Crete companions of the Minoic Birth-Godess Diktynna, Parhedroi of the Mother of Mountains Rhea, obstetrician of Zeus Kretagenes, they protect as Parastatai the holy act of birth by the apotropaic noise of their ritual weapon dances. The dict. Hymnos of Zeus appreciate them expressly in this function. It is allowed to equalize them with the 'daimones', which the Cretic Zeus as 'μεγιστος κουρος' leads on his procession through Dikte. This is suitable to the fact that the Kuretes on Crete are regarded as protectors of rural fertility and culture and act in this character as oath gods of Cretic city contracts. In contrast to this the epitheta 'philopaigmones', 'orchesteres' and 'chalkaspides' indicate the martial-ecstatic moment of the Pyrrhiche or Prylis (to Lycian prulija = war) and refer, like the bronze cymbal of Ida, to the cult milieu of a military strong Cretic-Minoic Youth-God which could be found in Kadmos or Herakles too. The ecstasis is a bridge to the demonic flute players and cult dancers of the Anatolic Kybele, the Korybantes, and other essential equal mythic-demonic groups like Anakes, Daktyles, Dioskures or Kabires with initiation and expiation character. As an addition a pic of the Ideon Andron Cave at the foot of the Psiloritis on Crete which is said to be one of the caves where Zeus was hidden.[ATTACH=full]915968[/ATTACH]<a href="http://www.crete.tournet.gr/Ideon_Andron_H_hle-si-1120-de.jsp" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.crete.tournet.gr/Ideon_Andron_H_hle-si-1120-de.jsp" rel="nofollow">http://www.crete.tournet.gr/Ideon_Andron_H_hle-si-1120-de.jsp</a> Notes:Parhedroi = demons, magic helpersParastatai = attendants, helpersμεγιστος κουρος= the divine childphilopaigmones = who love jokes and playingorchesteres = dancerschalkaspides = with bronze shields Sources:(1) Immisch, Kureten (in Roschers Lexikon)(2) Robert von Ranke -Graves, Greek Mythology(3) Der kleine Pauly, Kureten(4) Benjamin Hederich, Curetes(5) Karl Kerenyi, Die Mythologie der Griechen Best regards[/QUOTE]

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