Tetradrachm (Coin) Depicting the Goddess Athena

-490·Billon·Diam.: 2.4 cm (1 in.)

The use of coins as a form of money was invented in western Asia Minor in the early 7th century BCE. At the time when the coins in this case were struck, Greece was made up of separate city-states that issued their own currency. Made of gold, silver, bronze, and electrum (a gold-silver alloy), coins were literally worth their weight, but their value varied according to the percentage of their precious metal content. Occasionally a city needed more money than it had in reserves. By reducing the amount of precious metal and substituting a base metal, a coin could be produced of the same weight but no longer of the same value. Some currency was only honored within its own city walls, but trustworthy money encouraged trade. Athens had the biggest economy, and its coin became the standard in the Greek world.The population was largely illiterate, but it could identify the place of origin of a coin by its imagery. Many of these images referred to myths that were associated with the history of the community and thus were well known to the populace from religious ceremonies and theatrical entertainment. The story of a city’s founding, a local hero, the city’s guardian deity, and even the reason for the city’s wealth were subjects for a coin’s insignia. The emblems chosen to represent an ancient city often related to its patron god or goddess. For instance, the deity might be associated with a new community’s origins or involved in a notable story connected to the city. The most famous of all civic badges was the profile of Athena, the tutelary goddess of Athens, stamped on the city’s coinage. While other cities modernized the looks of their coins, Athens retained this design, first used in about 520 BCE, to emphasize the dependability of its currency. With silver extracted from local mines, the city had a constant source of revenue for financing civic projects such as building a navy or rebuilding after the city was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BCE. The purity and stability of Athens’s coinage made it the standard throughout the Mediterranean for centuries.

Catalogue

Year: -490
Medium: Billon
Dimensions: Diam.: 2.4 cm (1 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Ancient Greek

Artist

Ancient Greek

Sculpture

Ancient Greek art spans a period between about 900 and 30 BCE and is divided into four periods: Geometric, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. Throughout that period, artists worked with a wide variety of materials including bronze and stone for sculpture; terracotta for vases and figurines; various pigments for painting; and gold, silver, and bronze for coinage. In the Geometric period, not only were geometric patterns dominant but so too were abstract figures, especially horses , military, and funerary scenes. A lack of inscriptions can make the interpretation of this iconography difficult. Beginning in the 7th century BCE, the Archaic period ushered in an increasingly naturalistic style, especially in depictions of the human form. Influences from Egypt and the Near East can be seen in the appearance of motifs such as the palmette and lotus, along with composite creatures like griffins (bird/lion), sphinxes (human/winged lion), and sirens (bird/woman). Terracotta vases, especially those made in the second half of the sixth century BCE, depict aspects of daily life , funerary rites , warfare , and mythology . Experimentation with new techniques, such as black-figure and red-figure decoration, allowed for a wider range of figures and scenes to be depicted in greater detail. The Classical period, often defined by the Greek defeat of the Persians in 479 BCE, ushered in what is now known as the Golden Age of Greece. The city of Athens dominated the flourishing artistic scene, and the building of the Parthenon (the temple erected between 447 and 432 BCE on the Acropolis in Athens, Greece) paved the way for unprecedented achievements in architecture and sculpture. The final transition to the Hellenistic period, which lasted from about 323 through 30 BCE, occurred following the death of Alexander the Great, who famously spread Greek culture into the lands of his far-reaching conquest. Gods and heroes, who were previously depicted in two-dimensional scenes on vases or rel

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