Samuel Oer de Almeida, University of Tübingen

“Coins, Landscapes, and Myths: Connecting and Dividing the Communities of the Middle Maeander Valley”

The minting of coins in antiquity was a powerful way of a society to express its cultural
identity: the numerous mythological images adorning the Roman provincial coinages of the
Greek cities of the Middle Maeander Valley in Asia Minor provide unique insights into local
religious mindsets and the perception of natural landscape features.

Prominent geographical features were regularly associated with common myths propagated
on the locally produced coins. Against this background, the minting poleis endeavoured to
localise mythological events on their own territory: according to coins of Tralleis, for example,
Zeus was born and nurtured just a few metres above the city on the mountain range Messogis.
Nysa never grew tired of depicting the abduction of Persephone by Hades on its fields, while
Magnesia joined in by displaying Demeter riding a chariot drawn by winged serpents in
search for her daughter. Each of the two latter cities could, in fact, boast about a charonion, a
cave entrance to the underworld, in its vicinity. Moreover, coins of Tralleis and Magnesia share
representations of the river god Maiandros bearing witness to the notion of belonging to a
common geographical space.

While mountains, fields, caves, or rivers functioned as places of high symbolic potential, the
mythological imagery on the coins of the communities could paradoxically make use of these
landscape features in a simultaneously connecting as well as dividing way: the poleis entered
into direct competition with each other trying to assert their spatial claim on common myths.
Against this background, this paper will explore how the local elites responsible for the
minting of coins interacted with features of the natural environment and thereby contributed
to forging links or sharpen divisions between the communities of the Middle Maeander Valley.