Stater (Coin) Depicting a Land Tortoise (404-350 BCE): Artwork and History

Stater (Coin) Depicting a Land Tortoise (404-350 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Greek; minted in Aegina, Greece.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Coins of Aegina depicted images of sea turtles on their coins when the island of Aegina was the supreme sea power among the Greek city-states. The sea turtle represented its naval strength and resiliency. After its defeat by Athens in 458 BCE, Aegina ceased using the sea turtle and substituted the land tortoise, seen here, to symbolize its lost sea power. On the back (reverse) of this coin is a geometric design of a square divided into 5 triangles.

Object facts

• Title: Stater (Coin) Depicting a Land Tortoise
• Date: 404-350 BCE
• Artist attribution: Greek; minted in Aegina, Greece
• Place of origin: Greece
• Medium: Silver
• Dimensions: Diam.: 2 cm (13/16 in.)
• Type: Coin
• Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium
• Reference number: 1923.1128

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. William Nelson Pelouze

View the original

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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.