[SunkenCiv]

New research suggests that this coin marks an eclipse of Jupiter by the moon. It happened on January 17, 121 BC and was visible in Antioch, the capital of the Seleucid Empire. The coin itself show Zeus with a crescent moon above his head and a star like object hovering above the palm of his right hand.

[Sacajaweau]

There’s an old song....”Imagination”

[Sacajaweau]

I don’t think it’s a star...I think it’s a flower..

[JoeProBono]

[Rumplemeyer]

save

[VanDeKoik]

Did people back then have a really hard time just saying exactly what they mean?

[COBOL2Java]

The Seleucid Empire at its zenith, ca. 275 BC

Less than 100 years later (ca. 188 BC):

Eventually the "empire" encompassed little more than Antioch and some Syrian cities. The Seleucids existed solely because no other nation wished to absorb them — seeing as they constituted a useful buffer between their other neighbors.

[afraidfortherepublic]

"Nobody ever re-used this iconography again -- it was a one off," said Professor Robert Weir, of the University of Windsor in Canada,

I thought they spoke good English in Canada...

[afraidfortherepublic]

FTA: On the reverse is a depiction of Zeus, either nude or half-draped, . I can clearly see that he is half draped -- no either/or about it. Can't you? What is the matter with this author and his poor use of the language?

[BigOrangeI]

Starry Night software shows that on that date, from Antioch, the moon is in Leo and Jupiter is not eclipsed but experiences a conjunction with the moon. You have to go to about 65 deg N for an eclipse to occur on that date.

[ApplegateRanch]

Sure that is a star, and not a head of popping wheat?

Or that Zeus hasn’t just stopped to smell a flower?

...and what is with that herd of spermatozoa swimming at the bottom, and around the edges, of the coin?

[Jewbacca]

I sometimes wonder what future archaelogists are going to think when they see crappy Franklin Mint coins.

[Domestic Church]

Maybe he’s holding tinkerbell.

[dr_lew]

According to my Starry Night Software, which shows the event occuring in the early morning hours of 1/17/121 BC, the depiction would have been of a partial lunar eclipse, and not a waning or waxing crescent.

The software does not depict the lunar eclipse per se, but it has a pointer to the “Earth Shadow” which passes near to the moon while Jupiter is occulted. Jupiter emerges just as it and the moon are setting, and the sun is rising on the opposite horizon.