Wednesday, October 12, 2022

 

A Coin from Pella, Macedonia

In my small collection of Greek bronze coins (all gifts from my son) is a 2nd-1st century BC coin from Pella, capital of ancient Macedonia, that looks like this coin from the Wildwinds web site, with the obverse showing Poseidon's head, facing right, and the reverse showing a bull standing, facing right, with the inscription ΠΕΛ/ΛΗΣ:
See S.W. Grose, Catalogue of the McClean Collection of Greek Coins, Vol. II: The Greek Mainland, the Aegaean Islands, Crete (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926), p. 91 (numbers 3738-3739):
These are listed on the web site of the Fitzwilliam Museum (3278 and 3279), but no photographs are provided there.

See also Barclay V. Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins. Macedonia, Etc. (London, Trustees of the British Museum, 1879), p. 90:
According to George MacDonald, Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection, University of Glasgow, Vol. I: Italy, Sicily, Macedon, Thrace, and Thessaly (Glasgow: James Maclehouse and Sons, 1899), p. 362 (on coins of Pella):
The type of the bull feeding refers to the old name of Βούνομος.
Pella was formerly called Bounomos or Bounomeia (cattle pasture). See Margarethe Billerbeck and Arlette Neumann-Hartmann, edd., Stephani Byzantii Ethnica, Vol. IV (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), p. 50:
On the iconography see María Isabel Rodríguez López, "Iconography of Poseidon in Greek Coinage," in Rui Morais et al., edd., Greek Art in Motion Studies in Honour of Sir John Boardman on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2019), pp. 264-275 (bull at 265, diademed and bearded head of Poseidon at 272).

For the location of Pella see Richard Stillwell, ed., The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), Map 8 (grid 4B, location 225, red arrow added by me; click once or twice to enlarge):
Related post: A Coin from Maroneia, Thrace.



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