BUGS ON ANCIENT COINS

 

I have seen several articles on ancient coins discussing animals such as mammals and birds, but it's time the more numerous members of the animal kingdom get some attention. I'm talking, of course, about insects – with insects referring here to the six-legged variety.

I have been collecting ancient coins for a long time and am aware that cities did sometimes put bugs on their coins (the obvious example is the bee on the coinage of Ephesus). In general, there are not many cases where they appear as the major feature on one side of a coin. Usually, the bug was a small feature on the coin and could refer to a mythological event; a god or goddess; a political, family, or religious leader; an ability associated with the bug; economic importance; or even artistic whim. Like bugs in the real world, they are sometimes hard to notice.

 

When I started researching for this article, I wondered: How many kinds of bugs could there be on ancient coins, and how many types of coins could there be that have them? My cursory search yielded nine major bugs that appear on ancient Greek and Roman coins: the grasshopper; the ant; the butterfly; the scarab; the cicada; the cricket; and the bee, wasp, or fly. I'm sure this is not a complete set, but it is a good sample.

As to the second part of the question, the types of coins that have a bug on them number in the hundreds. A feature article could hardly scratch the surface of a subject that would take an entire book to do it justice. So, I'm going to hit the highlights of some of the more attractive and unusual buggy coins.

 

To read the complete article, see:
Hey! There's a Bug on My Ancient Coin (https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/hey-theres-a-bug-on-my-ancient-coin/)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web