«The unbeknown animal» on the coins of Cyrene

Abstract

The article revisits the first catalogue of ancient Greek and Roman coins in British collections, published by N.F. Haym in London in 1720. In the collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Haym found a golden coin from Cyrene with the image of strange small animal next to the silphium, the vegetative symbol of Cyrene, which evinced a multidisciplinary interest during the Enlightenment period in England. Such coins from Cyrene constitute the subject of the current investigation, which aims to analyze their iconography and, specifically, to identify the animal and tentatively suggest the reason that it was depicted together with the silphium. Among other things, the author concludes that the coin from the collection of the Duke of Devonshire helped the development of three fields of study: numismatics, zoology, and botany.

Keywords

• cyrene
• libya
• england
• silphium
• n.f. haym
• interdisciplinary approach
• numismatics
• zoology
• botany
• antiquity
• the age of enlightenment