Busacca Gallery

CORINTH TYPE AR STATER. EF. PEGASUS FLYING/ HEAD ATHENA WEARING CORINTHIAN HELMET. BETTER THAN PHOTO: CORINTHIAN TYPE STATER. EF. Surface better than image shows. In Greek religion and mythology, Athena or Athene, Athana), also referred to as Pallas Athena/Athene, is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill. Minerva, Athena's Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is also a shrewd companion of heroes and is the goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the virgin patron of Athens. The Athenians built the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her namesake city, Athens (Athena Parthenos), in her honour. Athena's veneration as the patron of Athens seems to have existed from the earliest times, and was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes. In her role as a protector of the city (polis), many people throughout the Greek world worshiped Athena as Athena Polias Athena of the city. The city of Athens and the goddess Athena essentially bear the same name, "Athenai" meaning "[many] Athenas". The Greek philosopher, Plato (429–347 BC), identified her with the Libyan deity Neith, the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, who was also identified with weaving. This is sensible, as some Greeks identified Athena's birthplace, in certain mythological renditions, as being beside Libya's Triton River. Scholar Martin Bernal created the controversial "Black Athena Theory" to explain this associated origin by claiming that the conception of Neith was brought to Greece from Egypt, along with "an enormous number of features of civilization and culture in the third and second millennia. Classically, Athena is portrayed wearing a full- length chiton, and sometimes in armor, with her helmet raised high on the forehead to reveal the image of Nike.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin

A coin is a piece of hard material that is standardized in weight, is produced in large quantities in order to facilitate trade, and primarily can be used as a legal tender token for commerce in the designated country, region, or territory. Coins are usually metal or a metallic material and sometimes made of synthetic materials, usually in the shape of a disc, and most often issued by a government. Coins are used as a form of money in transactions of various kinds, from the everyday circulation coins to the storage of large numbers of bullion coins. In the present day, coins and banknotes make up currency, the cash forms of all modern money systems. In the last hundred years, the face value of circulation coins has usually been higher than the gross value of the metal used in making them; exceptions occurring when inflation causes the metal value to surpass the face value, causing the minting authority to change the composition and the old coins to begin to disappear from circulation. Historically, a great number of coinage metals (including alloys) and other materials have been used practically, artistically, and experimentally in the production of coins for circulation, collection, and metal investment, where bullion coins often serve as more convenient stores of assured metal quantity and purity than other bullion. Coins have long been linked to the concept of money, as reflected by the fact that in some other languages the words "coin" and "currency" are synonymous. Fictional currencies may also bear the name coin (as such, an item may be said to be worth 123 coin or 123 coins).