Potamikon: Sinews of Acheloios: A Comprehensive Catalog of the Bronze Coinage of the Man-Faced Bull, with Essays on Origin and Identity

by Nicholas J Molinari (Editor), Nicola Sisci (Editor)

Potamikon attempts to solve a question that has perplexed scholars for hundreds of Who exactly is the man-faced bull featured so often on Greek coinage? It approaches this question by examining the origin of the iconography and traces its development throughout various Mediterranean cultures, finally arriving in Archaic and Classical Greece in the first millennium BC. Within the context of Greek coinage, the authors review all the past arguments for the identity of the man-faced bull before incorporating the two leading theories (Local River Gods vs. Acheloios) into a new theory of local embodiments of Acheloios, thereby preserving the sanctity of the local rivers while recognizing Acheloios as the original god of all water. The second part of the book exhibits many of these ‘Sinews of Acheloios’ as they appear throughout the Greek world on bronze coinage, in each case paying careful attention to the reasons a specific group adopted the iconography and shedding further light on the mythos of Acheloios.

Table of Contents

Why the Man-Faced Bull?

Part Concerning the Origin and Identity of the Man-Faced Section On the Origin of Man-Faced Bull Chapter Paleolithic Art-Iron Age

Chapter The Westward Migrations of Man-Faced Bull Iconography

Chapter The Iconography and Related Traditions in Early Western Mediterranean Cultures

Chapter The Etruscan and Greek Worlds

Chapter Distribution of the Iconography on Greek Coinage

Section On the Identity of the Man-Faced Chapter Past Arguments for the Identity of the Man-Faced Bull

Chapter The Identity of the Greek Man-Faced Bull

Part Catalog of the Bronze Coinage of the Man-Faced Section SICILY

Section ITALY

Section AKARNANIA

Section REMAINING MINTS

Appendix 1: Joseph Eckhel, ‘De tauro cum facie humana,’ in Doctrina Numorum Veterum, Vol. 1 ( Ignatius Alberti, 1792). Translated by Curtis Clay, 2013.

Appendix 2: ‘The Oxus River a man-faced Indian humped bull’ by Dr. Lloyd W. H. Taylor” after the title ‘The Oxus River God

Bibliography

Index

366 pages, Hardcover

Published July 10, 2016