Remarks on the coins of Ephesus struck during the Roman dominion / By John Yonge Akerman.

  • John Yonge Akerman
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the coins of Ephesus struck during the Roman dominion / By John Yonge Akerman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    GORDI ANUS. No. 48. Obv.—AYT. K. M. ANTli. rOPAIANOC C6. The Em¬ peror Ccesar Marcus Antoninus Gordianus. Laureated head. R.—E$ECION AAE^ANAPEON OMONOIA. Concord of the people of Ephesus and Alexandria. Diana Ephesia and Serapis standing on the deck of a galley. JE 10|. The custom of placing the divinities on rafts or galleys was of remote antiquity, and perhaps had its origin among the Egyptians. The Ephesians appear to have been aware of this; and the great deity of Alexandria is here accord¬ ingly placed on the deck of a galley in company with the Ephesian goddess. Pausanias describes a very curious figure of Minerva seen by him at Priene. It was formed on the Egyptian model, and placed on a raft, as if sailing from Phoenician Tyre.105 Porphyry alludes to this practice- of the Egyptians, who, he informs us, placed their gods on rafts or galleys, because they considered that the element on which they floated was necessary to the production and the maintenance of animal and vegetable life; moreover, he observes, in Holy Writ it is said, that the Spirit of God moved upon the icaters.l0Q Other coins of Gordian struck at Ephesus bear the fi¬ gures of Serapis and Isis; and on one of them the goddess is depicted as Isis Pharia, holding a sail distended by the wind and standing by the Alexandrian Pharos,107 a type probably borrowed from that of a common Alexandrian coin of Antoninus Pius. 105 yap £vXwv. Kal iir' avrrjg Oedg ixTvpov rf/g <$>oiviKT]g et,eTrXev(Te KaO' i)vriva k. t. X. .Archiac. lib. vii. c.5. 106 De Antro Nympharum, pp. 256-7. Edit. Cantab. 1655.
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