SALA in LYDIA 117AD Pseudo-Autonomous Athena Cybele Greek Coin HADRIAN i56090

Item: i56090

Authentic Ancient Coin of:

Greek city of Sala in Lydia,

Bronze 17mm (4.40 grams) Struck during time of Hadrian, circa 117-138 A.D.
Reference: RPC III 2443; SNG von Aulock 8250; BMC 14
СΑΛΗΝΩΝ, Helmeted and draped bust of Athena right, wearing aegis.
ЄΠΙ Γ ΟΥΑΛ ΑΝΔΡΟΝЄΙΚΟΥ, Cybele seated left on throne, holding patera and resting 
elbow upon tympanum; lion to left.

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Athena 
or Athene (Latin:

Minerva
), 
also referred to as Pallas Athena, is the goddess of war, civilization, 
wisdom, strength, strategy, crafts, justice and skill in
Greek mythology
.
Minerva
, 
Athena’s Roman incarnation, embodies similar attributes. Athena is also a shrewd 
companion of heroes
 
and the goddess
 
of heroic
 
endeavour. She is the
virgin
 
patron of Athens
. 
The Athenians built the
Parthenon
 
on the Acropolis of her namesake city, Athens, in her honour (Athena Parthenos). 
Athena’s cult as the patron of Athens seems to have existed from the earliest 
times and was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to 
cultural changes. In her role as a protector of the city (polis), 
many people throughout the Greek world worshiped Athena as Athena Polias 
(“Athena of the city”).
Athens
 
and Athena bear etymologically connected names.

Cybele  
(Phrygian:
Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya “Kubeleyan Mother”, perhaps “Mountain 
Mother”;
Lydian
Kuvava;
Greek
: Kybele,) was an originally
Anatolian

mother goddess
. Little is known of her oldest 
Anatolian cults, other than her association with mountains, hawks and lions. She 
may have been Phrygia
‘s state deity; her Phrygian cult was 
adopted and adapted by Greek colonists of
Asia Minor
and spread from there to mainland 
Greece and its more distant
western colonies
from around the 6th century 
BCE.

In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She was partially assimilated 
to aspects of the Earth-goddess
Gaia
, her
Minoan
equivalent
Rhea
, and the Corn-Mother goddess
Demeter
. Some city-states, notably
Athens
, evoked her as a protector, but her most 
celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, 
exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment 
of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following. Uniquely in Greek 
religion, she had a
transgender
or
eunuch

mendicant
priesthood. Many of her Greek cults 
included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort
Attis
, who was probably a Greek invention. In 
Greece, Cybele is associated with
mountains
, town and city walls, fertile nature, 
and wild animals, especially

lions.

In Rome, Cybele was known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”). The Roman State 
adopted and developed a particular form of her cult, and claimed her 
conscription as a key religious component in their success against Carthage 
during the Punic Wars
.
Roman mythographers
reinvented her as a

Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people by 
way of the Trojan prince
Aeneas
. With Rome’s eventual
hegemony
over the Mediterranean world, 
Romanised forms of Cybele’s cults spread throughout the Roman Empire. The 
meaning and morality of her cults and priesthoods were topics of debate and 
dispute in Greek and Roman literature, and remain so in modern scholarship.

Lydia 
was an Iron Age
kingdom of western
Asia Minor
located generally east of ancient
Ionia
in the modern western
Turkish
provinces of
Uşak
,
Manisa
and inland
İzmir
. Its population spoke an
Anatolian language
known as
Lydian
.

At its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western
Anatolia
. Lydia (known as Sparda by the 
Achaemenids) was a satrapy
(province) of the Achaemenid
Persian Empire
, with
Sardis
as its capital.
Tabalus
, appointed by
Cyrus the Great
, was the first satrap 
(governor). (See:
Lydia (satrapy)
.)

Lydia was later the name of a
Roman province
.

Coins are said to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century 
BC.