Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Stater
| Issuer | Gortyna |
|---|---|
| Year | 330 BC - 270 BC |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 11.64 g |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Europa seated facing within the branches of a plane tree, nude to the waist, her drapery falling below. With her raised right hand she lifts her veil, while her left hand restrains an eagle with outspread wings resting in her lap — an allusion to the Cretan myth of Zeus and Europa. Beneath her figure, at lower left, a bull's head rendered in profile to left, serving as an additional divine attribute referencing the god's transformation. The composition is rendered in the fine archaic-to-classical transitional style characteristic of Cretan coinage. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A bull standing to right in high relief, rendered with naturalistic musculature and vigor, his tail swishing upward behind him. His head is dramatically turned back to the left as he licks his right rear leg — a lively and distinctive motif repeated consistently in the Gortyna stater series. In the exergual field below the bull, a horsefly (gadfly) is depicted, an iconographic element associated with Io and broadly with Cretan mythology. The overall style reflects the accomplished die-engraving tradition of Archaic and early Classical Crete. |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Plain |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | Log in to see details |
| Additional information | Log in to see details |