This coin was issued by Lysimachus, the former general of Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death, Lysimachus ruled part of Alexander's empire in Bulgaria, northern Greece and Turkey known as 'Thrace'. Lysimachus used Alexander's portrait on his coins to emphasise his position as Alexander's successor. Alexander was worshipped as a god after his death. Here he sports the ram's horns of the god, Zeus Ammon, whom Egyptian priests claimed was Alexander's father. On the reverse of the coin is the goddess Athena.
Who was Alexander the Great?
Alexander was born in the kingdom of Macedon in 356 BC. By the age of 25 he had conquered Greece, Egypt and Persia, creating an empire spanning 2 million square miles. Following his death in 323 BC, Alexander's generals began to squabble over his legacy. Since they could not claim a blood-tie, these generals tried to legitimise their rule through other connections with Alexander. Eventually they divided the empire into three main kingdoms in Macedon, Egypt and Persia and went on to form powerful dynasties.
Lysimachus was a great hunter and it was said that Alexander shut him in a cage with a lion to test his prowess
Heads or tails?
With this startling image of Alexander the Great we are at the beginning of a tradition of portraiture on coins that extends to the modern day. But why does such portraiture begin only around 300 BC, three centuries after the invention of coinage, and why with Alexander the Great?
The clues lie in the portrait itself. Alexander is not portrayed as a man, but as a god. He bears the attribute of Zeus Ammon, an allusion to the claim that he was this god's son. As such, the 'portrait’, in fact fits into a tradition that had existed since the birth of coinage.
The head of a deity was an entirely appropriate subject for depiction on a coin, and thousands of examples exist in the corpus of Greek coinage. So Alexander the 'god', not Alexander the 'man' is the design of Lysimachus' coin. And this fact explains too why it was only now that the head of someone we would regard as a man could appear on a coin. For it is with Alexander the Great that the Greek process of deifying once mortal men begins in earnest. In the case of Alexander this portrayal began only after his death, but within a generation of this living kings would be portrayed on coins, albeit initially with attributes that suggested their deification.
At one level, it strikes the modern eye as odd that the Greeks should have been so reluctant to portray a man on their coins. We are used today, especially those of us who live in monarchies, to seeing the current head of state depicted on our coinage.
Yet the impact of such images, although perhaps muted to those who see such portraits on a daily basis, is still powerful in some cultures. One has only to think of the coinage of one of the world’s largest democracies, to see the taboo in action in the modern world. No living individual is yet portrayed on the circulating coinage of the United States, which uses instead a gallery of dead presidents where other nations acknowledge the living.
Comments
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18 comments
- 11. At 11:03 on 19 May 2010, bigbastian wrote:
- 12. At 16:07 on 20 May 2010, David Prudames wrote:
- 13. At 04:50 on 21 May 2010, vixfoxwatch wrote:
- 14. At 09:11 on 21 May 2010, David Prudames wrote:
- 15. At 20:23 on 21 May 2010, Tamarin wrote:
- 16. At 21:27 on 23 May 2010, kenwyn74 wrote:
- 17. At 04:22 on 25 May 2010, vixfoxwatch wrote:
- 18. At 11:42 on 29 October 2010, Miles Hodgkiss wrote:
pages 1Â 2ÂI have listened to the whole series several times and find it enthralling. It has made me constantly rethink assumptions about art, history, human activity - you name it. Yes, the music is irritating, but the thing is not to get yourself worked up about it. Incidentally, Trev and Rionna (Comments 7 & 10) are both right that "who" would be correct, but because it is the subject of "was".
Nick - thanks for flagging that, the USA is up there but India is the world's largest democracy as you correctly point out and I've just updated the statement
trev / Rionna - thanks also to you both for picking up the grammatical mistake. We'll get that fixed as soon as possible.
David Prudames, British Museum
Not only am I treated to a series of fascinating and informative programmes, I'm receiving free English grammar lessons - thank you to the contributors. Can someone kindly answer this: on the television trailers for 'A History of the World' there is a commentary about a fallen conqueror and a horse which takes a year to encompass an area of land (images of a white horse). I KNOW this from somewhere but fail to recall it. Does anyone know what it is, please, or to whom (or should that be who)it refers?
vixfoxwatch - the trailer is referring to a Gold coin of Kumaragupta. It's a fascinating story and the programme about it is coming up the week after next. More info here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/Hcfl5uCzS8Gn-Ih_cVCikQ
I really enjoy this programme. I find the objects and history amazing. Keep up the good work. I will try to track them down in the BM next time I manage to get to London
trev, Rionna, David. Sorry to contradict you all, but 'whom' is correct. However, for both clarity and grammatical accuracy it should be "Zeus Ammon, whom Egyptian priests claimed to be Alexander's father".
Dear David, Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. Yes, I remember now: the horse sacrifice of Karmaragupta was something I read when I was a teenager (many years ago) and it obviously stuck in my memory. The prose accompanying the trailer is equally memorable - and beautiful. Again, many thanks. Vixfoxwatch
Dear kenwyn74 I read somewhere that what the High priest of Amun meant to say is unclear. Some have suggested that in his urgent desire to welcome Alexander he tried to speak Greek. It has been suggested that he meant to say ?Welcome my son? but by accident it came out as ?Welcome son of god?.
Having consulted the Oracle at Delphi I think it was important for him to garner further support for his march through Persia by winning recognition from Amun with whome the Greek world had had a long association. Naturally he would discount the Isis Osirus cult who he had affectively just beaten at the battle of Issus.
Wikipedia explains that by the time of Alexander the cult of Amun had long since wained, having succumed to the Isis Osirus cult, and had been reduced to the single oricular site at Siwa. In Nubia the cult remained and it is possible that Alexander in so seeking Amun recognition was also seeking to prevent an incursion from Nubia whilst he was away to the East following, as he saw it, in the foot steps of Herakles. Also the Alexander coin is clearly a reflection of the head of a ram presentation at Megalopolis of the god Amun.(Paus. viii. 32. § 1)
W:- ?In areas outside of Egypt where the Egyptians had previously brought the cult of Amun his worship continued. In Nubia, where his name was pronounced Amane, he remained a national deity, with his priests, at Meroe and Nobatia, regulating the whole government of the country via an oracle, choosing the ruler, and directing military expeditions. According to Diodorus Siculus, these religious leaders even were able to compel kings to commit suicide, although this tradition stopped when Arkamane, in the 3rd century BC, slew them.
In Libya there remained a solitary oracle of Amun in the Libyan Desert at the oasis of Siwa. The worship of Ammon was introduced into Greece at an early period, probably through the medium of the Greek colony in Cyrene, which must have formed a connection with the great oracle of Ammon in the Oasis soon after its establishment. Ammon had a temple and a statue, the gift of Pindar, at Thebes (Paus. ix. 16. § 1), and another at Sparta, the inhabitants of which, as Pausanias (iii. 18. § 2) says, consulted the oracle of Ammon in Libya from early times more than the other Greeks. At Aphytis, Chalcidice, Ammon was worshipped, from the time of Lysander, as zealously as in Ammonium. Pindar the poet honoured the god with a hymn. At Megalopolis the god was represented with the head of a ram (Paus. viii. 32. § 1), and the Greeks of Cyrenaica dedicated at Delphi a chariot with a statue of Ammon.
Such was its reputation among the Classical Greeks that Alexander the Great journeyed there after the battle of Issus and during his occupation of Egypt, where he was declared the son of Amun by the oracle. Alexander thereafter considered himself divine. Even during this occupation, Amun, identified by these Greeks as a form of Zeus, continued to be the principal local deity of Thebes during its decay.?
Also of interest:
?Several words derive from Amun via the Greek form, Ammon: ammonia and ammonite. The Romans called the ammonium chloride they collected from deposits near the Temple of Jupiter Amun in ancient Libya sal ammoniacus (salt of Amun) because of proximity to the nearby temple.[12]
Ammonia, as well as being the chemical, is a genus name in the foraminifera. Both these foraminiferans (shelled Protozoa) and ammonites (extinct shelled cephalopods) bear spiral shells resembling a ram's, and Ammon's, horns.?
The regions of the hippocampus in the brain are called the cornu ammonis ? literally "Amun's Horns", due to the horned appearance of the dark and light bands of cellular layers.
Its great to chat. All the best....