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Ancient Empires VIII

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(2013) 2" x 2" for the pendant, silver art clay (cut, carved, fired, polished and burnished), copy of a coin of Alexander the great, bezel wire, silver wire

I guess I still wasn't done with the Ancient Empires series. The center-piece for this coin is a copy of the famous Lysimachos coin of Alexander the great. Alexander created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. He was undefeated in battle and is considered one of history's most successful commanders.

Alexander succeeded his father, Philip II of Macedon, to the throne in 336 BC after Philip was assassinated. Alexander was also awarded the generalship of Greece. He used this authority to execute his father's military expansion plans. In 334 BC, he invaded the Achaemenid empire, ruled Asia Minor, and began a series of campaigns that lasted ten years. Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, most notably the battles of Issus and Gaugamela. He subsequently overthrew the Persian King Darius III and conquered the entirety of the Persian Empire. At that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River.

Seeking to reach the "ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea", he invaded India in 326 BC, but was eventually forced to turn back at the demand of his troops. Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, without executing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in several states ruled by the Diadochi, Alexander's surviving generals and heirs.

The Lysimachos coin shows Alexander in profile and with ram's horns above his temples. He was half-believed by his contemporaries to have been a son of Zeus rather than of his mortal father Philip, a myth that his mother Olympias fostered. When Alexander conquered Egypt he visited the oracle of the god Ammon where his divine ancestry was confirmed by the priests. So in addition to the lion's pelt which was the attribute of Hercules, another mythical son of Zeus, Alexander also adopted the ram's horns of the god Ammon, who the Greeks saw as an Egyptian avatar of the god Zeus.

I set the coin in an ornate design of four points of scrollwork, not to symbolize a cross but the god-king's passion to conquer the four corners of the known world.
Image size
1010x1196px 1.15 MB
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