★ Rare Griffin Stater of Kyzikos ★

Mysia. Kyzikos circa 500-450 BC.
Stater EL

20 mm, 15,99 g

Griffin seated to left, raising his right forepaw; below, tunny swimming to left / Quadripartite incuse square.

Good Very Fine.

BMFA 1455; Greenwell 143; SNG Paris 239-240; Traité II, 2, 2729 and pl. CLXXVI, 10; Von Fritze 99.

Rare! A creature of ancient myth, the griffin has been depicted in Egyptian and Persian art as early as the fourth millennium BC. By the middle Bronze Age (circa 1950-1550 BC), griffins began to appear in regions such as Syria, the Levant, and Anatolia, and they are notably featured in 15th-century BC frescoes within the throne room of the Bronze Age palace at Knossos. Traditionally associated with guarding valuable treasures, the griffin became a symbol of divine power, often depicted as a protector of sacred objects. With the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle, the griffin embodies the strength and majesty of both creatures. Over time, it also became linked to the vast quantities of gold that traveled southward from the northern wildernesses into Greek and Persian territories. The seemingly endless flow of gold inspired much speculation among the Greeks regarding its origins. These musings eventually crystallized into the myth of a land called Hyperborea, meaning 'beyond the north wind.' This legendary place is referenced by Homer, Pindar, Hesiod, and Strabo, with Herodotus writing: "But in the north of Europe there is by far the most gold. In this matter again I cannot say with assurance how the gold is produced, but it is said that one-eyed men called Arimaspians steal it from griffins. But I do not believe this, that there are one-eyed men who have a nature otherwise the same as other men. The most outlying lands, though, as they enclose and wholly surround all the rest of the world, are likely to have those things which we think the finest and the rarest" (The Histories, 3.116). Although Hyperborea is widely accepted as a mythological construct, pieced together from various truths and imaginative tales, one potential source for the northern gold might be the Altai Mountains of Skythia (modern-day Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, and Russia). The name 'Altai' itself means 'Gold Mountain' in Mongolian. Some scholars (Mayor, 1991) suggest that this region, rich in gold deposits and home to numerous Protoceratops fossils, could be the origin of the Greek legend of griffins guarding gold. The constant erosion of sandstone rock formations in this area reveals bleached white, fully articulated skeletons of these prominently beaked quadruped dinosaurs, which would have been conspicuous against the red sediment and likely noticed by early inhabitants and travelers. Indeed, 5th-century BC human remains in the Altai Mountains have been discovered with griffin tattoos, sometimes accompanied by gold griffin artifacts. It is, therefore, no surprise that the city of Kyzikos, which held a near-monopoly on gold coinage in regions from Troy to Ionia, the Propontis, Bithynia, and the Black Sea, repeatedly adopted the griffin as a symbol on its coinage, given the animal’s legendary reputation as a guardian of precious metals.