>> Ancient Greek Coins - #Greek-28390
393–300 B.C. - Tetradrachm
Coin Type: ANCIENT GREEK Date: 393 - 300 BC
Denomination: TETRADRACHM Metal: SILVER
Ruler: GREEK - CITY STATES Framing: 18K
Mint: ATTICA Certificate Number: 28390
Country: GREECE
THE OWL OF ATHENS
Obverse: Head of Athena right, wearing crested helmet ornamented with three olive-leaves and floral scroll.
Reverse: To the left moon crescent - Owl standing right, head facing, in erect posture; all within incuse square. 
The reference used for this coin is the British Museum Catalog of Greek Coins, Volume 1.
Owls were considered by the Greeks to be significant, wise, and important birds. Besides being mentioned in early Greek poetry, they were also associated with the goddess Athena. Consequently, when the Athenians formed a democratic system in the early 5th Century B. C., they commemorated the event by issuing the famous owl coins (a bird sacred to the goddess) which featured an upright owl on one side and the head of Athena on the other. Throughout the first decade of the fifth Century B. C., these coins were struck in abundance concurrent with the discovery of large quantities of silver ore and the rapid expansion of Athenian naval superiority.
The long drawn out Peloponnesian War 431 - 404 B. C. drained Athens of her wealth and ended with the capture of the city by the Spartans. Although prosperous again in the 4th Century, Athens never fully regained her importance in international affairs, and in Hellenistic times became dependent first on Macedon, then Rome.
This enormous issue, the largest of any Greek state up to that time, seems to have begun when the Athenians appropriated 5,000 talens from the treasury of the Delian League in order to pay for rebuilding work on the city’s temples. Over the following decades-huge quantities of tetradrachms were minted to finance grandiose building projects, such as the Parthenon, and later to cover the cost of the disastrous Peloponnesian War, which ended in financial ruin for the Athenian State.
The design was to last for three hundred years.
|
