Alexander the Great Coin;

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Title	Alexander the Great Coin;
Title Alternative	Coin of Herakles and Zeus;
File Name	civ metadata CID; Civ Archive 009 correct picture; 98300698.jpg
Copyright Status/Owner	Public Domain; Granted
Rights (Patron Usage Instructions)	http://www.lib.byu.edu/genericnote_copyright.html
Course	HUM 201
Lecture Number	15
Professor	Green, Jon D., 1940-
Description	This image depicts a silver Tetradrachm issued by Alexander the Great at Alexandria around 326 or 325 BC, just a few years before his death. The silver coinage produced throughout his empire employed the same two motifs; the obverse showed a head of Herakles wearing a lionskin, and the reverse represented an enthroned Zeus. These images held great symbolic significance for the young conqueror. For generations Macedonian rulers had claimed descent from the famous hero Herakles, who had been admitted into Mt. Olympus after his death. For Alexander, whose favorite book was the Iliad and who fashioned himself as a heroic conqueror, this valiant ancestor became particularly meaningful. According to later authors, Alexander’s mother, Olympus, claimed that Zeus was her son’s father and some believe that Alexander himself went to the sanctuary of Zeus-Ammon in the desert at Siwa to have that paternity confirmed. Coinage produced by Alexander’s successors, particularly Ptolemy I, replaced Herakles’ head with Alexander’s own, wearing an elephant headdress in a reference to Heraklean iconography, to justify their own claims to power. This particular coin was produced in the last stylistic phase of Alexandrian coins and copies spread throughout Alexander’s vast empire.
Creator	Unknown Artist
Country	Egypt
Geographic Region	Africa
Type	Slide
Platform	Cross-Platform
File Size	200.877 KB
Genre	History
Category	Politics
Keywords	Alexander the Great; Macedonia; Herakles; Zeus; Coin;
Time Period	Macedonian Empire
Date Range	336 BC: 323 BC
Date Original	326/325 BC
Date Digital	2005-03-29
Metadata Entry Date	2009-08-11
Quality	High
Contributors	Brigham Young University
Copyright Expiration Date	2005-09-01
Edition	Electronic reproduction;
Format	JPEG
Owning Institution	American Numismatic Society, New York
Publisher Digital	Brigham Young University
Source	Al. N. Oikonomides, ed., The coins of Alexander the Great (Chicago: Ares Publishers Inc., 1981), frontispiece; Blanche R. Brown, Royal Portraits in Sculpture and Coins: Pyrrhos and the successors of Alexander the Great (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1995),12, 21-23, Plate X; Fred S. Kleiner and Christin J. Mamiya, Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 12th ed., Vol 1 (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005), 148.
Use Time	0:00:00

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