An Important Mythological Reverse Type

427, Lot: 370. Estimate $300. Sold for $1300. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

COELE-SYRIA, Damascus. Philip I. AD 244-249. Æ (29mm, 22.25 g, 12h). Laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / Female figure (Ambrosia?) facing, head right, metamorphosing into grape vine; to right, Dionysus, holding thyrsus, standing left, extending hand; above, ram’s head right. Apparently an unpublished type, but see K. Butcher, “Ambrosia in Damascus?,” NC 170 (2010), pp. 85-91, for a discussion of the Ambrosia myth and iconography, and especially how it relates to Damascus. VF, dark green patina with reddish earthen highlights/deposits. Extremely rare.

As Kevin Butcher comments in his Numismatic Chronicle article: “She (Ambrosia) is generally enumerated among the Hyades, the nurses of Dionysus, and metamorphosed into a grape vine during Dionysus’ war with Lycurgus. The image of Lycurgus ensnared in the vine was popular in the Roman world, and well-known today through images of the Lycurgus cup in the British Museum.” As to the connection with Damascus, Butcher continues: “There was a long-standing tradition in antiquity that Nysa, the birthplace of Dionysus, was located in Phoenicia, Arabia or near Damascus.”