Drachm (Coin) Depicting the Goddess Hera (350-220 BCE): Artwork and History

Drachm (Coin) Depicting the Goddess Hera (350-220 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Greek; minted in Knossos, Crete.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The front (obverse) of this coin depicts the head of the goddess Hera facing left. The back (reverse) depicts a square labyrinth. The city of Knossos drew its civic icon from the myth of the Minotaur. The monster, born to the queen of Crete, was hidden away in a labyrinth, or maze. Yearly he devoured youths and maidens until, with the help of a ball of string, the hero Theseus made his way to the center of the labyrinth. There he killed the Minotaur and used the string to find his way out of the maze. The story was so famous that anyone seeing the labyrinth on this coin knew that Knossos was its source.

Object facts

• Title: Drachm (Coin) Depicting the Goddess Hera
• Date: 350-220 BCE
• Artist attribution: Greek; minted in Knossos, Crete
• Place of origin: Knossos
• Medium: Silver
• Dimensions: Diam.: 1.9 cm (3/4 in.)
• Type: Coin
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1922.4914

Collection credit

Gift of Martin A. Ryerson

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.