Octodrachm: Head of Arsinoe II (obverse); Double Cornucopia (reverse)
Description
[Greek, Ptolemaic, minted at Alexandreia (Egypt), reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes or Ptolemy VI Philometor] On this long-lived series of coinage, Arsinoe II, a divinized Hellenistic queen, wears the crown and veil associated with Hera; a scepter may be just visible beside her neck. The daughter of Ptolemy I, founder of the Hellenistic Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt for nearly three centuries, Arsinoe married Lysimachos, king of Thrace, at the age of fifteen. After his death, she married first her half-brother and then her full brother, Ptolemy II, beginning a long-lasting Ptolemaic dynastic tradition of sibling marriage. Twin cornucopias on the reverse of this coin likely refer to the divine ruling couple, presaged in Egypt by Isis and Osiris, and in Greece by Zeus and Hera.
Inscriptions (1)
Transcription
ΑΡΣΙΝΟΗΣ | ΦΙΛΑΔΕΛΦΟΥEnglish description
Cross-references (2)
- Wikidata Q80041730 tier-1
- CMA-id 142026 tier-2
About this record's data
- From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Cleveland Museum of Art (Egyptian).
- AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
- Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
- Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.