Catalog
Æ
| Issuer | Gortyna |
|---|---|
| Year | 245 BC - 221 BC |
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| Composition | Bronze |
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| Obverse description | Bare head of Artemis facing right, hair bound with a taenia and rendered in curling locks. A bow and quiver are visible over the shoulder, serving as identifying attributes of the goddess. The portrait is executed in the Hellenistic style characteristic of Cretan civic coinage of the period, with fine modelling of the facial features. The field is plain, with no legend or additional devices. |
|---|---|
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Gortyna was one of Crete's dominant poleis during the third century BC, frequently in conflict with Knossos for island supremacy. The city controlled fertile land in the Mesara plain and maintained enough civic authority to produce a sustained bronze coinage — an infrastructure commitment that smaller Cretan communities rarely managed. Copenhagen 458 is among the better-documented die pairings for this type, with Svoronos's Cretan corpus remaining the foundational reference more than a century after its publication.