|
Greek city of Sinope in Paphlagonia
Silver Drachm 18mm (5.25 grams) Struck circa 365-322 B.C.
Reference: HGC 7, 391; Sear 3696
Certification: NGC Ancients VF 4375823-285
Head of nymph Sinope left, hair in sphendone, wearing necklace and earring; before aplustre.
Sea-eagle left, wings spread, standing on the back of a dolphin left; ΣINΩ below; magistrate’s name between eagle’s wing and tail.
Sinope was a colony of Miletos, founded in the 7th century B.C. According to the mythological founding of the city, the city was named after an Amazon or the nymph daughter of the River Asopos. Sinope became the most important city on the southern coastline of the Black Sea. The city drew it’s wealth from rich tuna fisheries, trade in grain and even timber, olives and metals acquired from dependent colonies further east. The walled city was located on an isthmus jutting out into the Euxine Sea. The city is historically known for having been destroyed, rebuilt and having changed hands between many owners over the years, including Mithradates the Great and the Romans during the time of Julius Caesar. It was eventually a free city under the Romans.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
 A nymph (Greek: νύμφη, nymphē) in Greek mythology and in Latin mythology is a minor female nature deity typically associated with a particular location or landform. Different from goddesses, nymphs are generally regarded as divine spirits who animate nature, and are usually depicted as beautiful, young nubile maidens who love to dance and sing; their amorous freedom sets them apart from the restricted and chaste wives and daughters of the Greek polis. They are believed to dwell in mountains and groves, by springs and rivers, and also in trees and in valleys and cool grottoes. Although they would never die of old age nor illness, and could give birth to fully immortal children if mated to a god, they themselves were not necessarily immortal, and could be beholden to death in various forms. Charybdis and Scylla were once nymphs.
Other nymphs, always in the shape of young maidens, were part of the retinue of a god, such as Dionysus, Hermes, or Pan, or a goddess, generally the huntress Artemis. Nymphs were the frequent target of satyrs.
Etymology
Nymphs are personifications of the creative and fostering activities of nature, most often identified with the life-giving outflow of springs: as Walter Burkert (Burkert 1985:III.3.3) remarks, “The idea that rivers are gods and springs divine nymphs is deeply rooted not only in poetry but in belief and ritual; the worship of these deities is limited only by the fact that they are inseparably identified with a specific locality.”
The Greek word νύμφη has “bride” and “veiled” among its meanings: hence a marriageable young woman. Other readers refer the word (and also Latin nubere and German Knospe) to a root expressing the idea of “swelling” (according to Hesychius, one of the meanings of νύμφη is “rose-bud”).
Adaptations
The Greek nymphs were spirits invariably bound to places, not unlike the Latin genius loci Arethusa to Sicily. In the works of the Greek-educated Latin poets, the nymphs gradually absorbed into their ranks the indigenous Italian divinities of springs and streams (Juturna, Egeria, Carmentis, Fontus), while the Lymphae (originally Lumpae), Italian water-goddesses, owing to the accidental similarity of their names, could be identified with the Greek Nymphae. The mythologies of classicizing Roman poets were unlikely to have affected the rites and cult of individual nymphs venerated by country people in the springs and clefts of Latium. Among the Roman literate class, their sphere of influence was restricted, and they appear almost exclusively as divinities of the watery element. Nymphs are also portrayed as selfish and as attention seekers who walk around naked in the middle of forests.
In this 1896 painting by John William Waterhouse, Hylas is abducted by the Naiads, i.e. fresh water nymphs
Echo, an Oread (mountain nymph) watches Narcissus in this 1903 painting by John William Waterhouse
Paphlagonia is a city with a population of 36,734 on Sinopİnce Burun ((İnceburun, Cape Ince), by its Cape Sinop (Sinop Burnu, Boztepe Cape, Boztepe Burnu) which is situated on the most northern edge of the Turkish side of Black Sea coast, in the ancient region of Paphlagonia, in modern-day northern Turkey, historically known as Sinope. It is the capital of Sinop Province.
Long used as a Hittite port which appears in Hittite sources as “Sinuwa” (J. Garstang, The Hittite Empire, p. 74), the city proper was re-founded as a Greek colony from the city of Miletus in the 7th century BC (Xenophon, Anabasis 6.1.15; Diodorus Siculus 14.31.2; Strabo 12.545). Sinope flourished as the Black Sea port of a caravan route that led from the upper Euphrates valley (Herodotus 1.72; 2.34), issued its own coinage, founded colonies, and gave its name to a red arsenic sulfate mined in Cappadocia, called “Sinopic red earth” (Miltos Sinôpikê) or sinople.
Sinope escaped Persian domination until the early 4th century BC, and in 183 BC it was captured by Pharnaces I and became capital of the kingdom of Pontus. Lucullus conquered Sinope for Rome in 70 BC, and Julius Caesar established a Roman colony there, Colonia Julia Felix, in 47 BC. Mithradates Eupator was born and buried at Sinope, and it was the birthplace of Diogenes, of Diphilus, poet and actor of the New Attic comedy, of the historian Baton, and of the Christian heretic of the 2nd century AD, Marcion.
It remained with the Eastern Roman Empire or the Byzantines. It was a part of the Empire of Trebizond from the sacking of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 until the capture of the city by the Seljuk Turks of Rûm in 1214.
After 1261, Sinop became home to two successive independent emirates following the fall of the Seljuks: the Pervâne and the Candaroğlu. It was captured by the Ottomans in 1458.
In November 1853, at the start of the Crimean War, in the Battle of Sinop, the Russians, under the command of Admiral Nakhimov, destroyed an Ottoman frigate squadron in Sinop, leading Britain and France to declare war on Russia.
Sinop hosted a US military base that was important for intelligence during the cold war era. The US base was closed in 1992.
Explorer Bob Ballard discovered an ancient ship wreck north west of Sinop in the Black Sea and was shown on National Geographic.
|
