Coins in the World and the World (= Cosmos) in Coins: A Cosmographic Approach

The world of coins is a very interesting virtual universe. Coins have been used in the past three Millennia for purposes related to financial transactions. However, many of them are small works of art that imply a different—more cultural and sometimes also cultic—sig­ni­fi­cance. By their representations and motifs they were used for political, religious and fi­nan­cial reasons. Still, the motifs, and pictures on some of them have a mere cosmovisional ap­proach and present us with the ancient imago mundi of their creators. We examine a few coins belonging to the Collection of the Numismatic Muse­um in A­thens, that bear certain cos­mographic motifs and symbols (stars, constellations, zo­dia­cal asterisms, planets, and the li­ke). We are examining and discussing the semantics of these very cos­movisional represen­ta­tions, that make of the related coins small virtual worlds in­side our Universe, the Cosmos …