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   View Categories Home > Catalog > |Themes & Provenance| > |Denominations| > |Cistophori| > GS76211
Pergamon, Mysia, c. 123 - 104 B.C.
|Cistophori|, |Pergamon,| |Mysia,| |c.| |123| |-| |104| |B.C.|, The cista mystica was a basket used for housing sacred snakes in connection with the initiation ceremony into the cult of Bacchus (Dionysus). In the Dionysian mysteries a snake, representing the god and possibly symbolic of his phallus, was carried in a cista mystica on a bed of vine leaves. The cista in the mysteries of Isis may also have held a serpent, perhaps associated with the missing phallus of Osiris.

The thyrsus is the staff carried by Bacchus and his associates; topped by a pine cone or a bunch of ivy leaves and wreathed with tendrils of vine or ivy.
GS76211. Silver cistophoric tetradrachm, Kleiner Pergamum 7; Pinder 101; SNG Cop 424; SNGvA 7465; BMC Mysia p. 126, 125; SNG BnF -, VF, well centered, uneven toning, Pergamon (Bergama, Turkey) mint, weight 12.632g, maximum diameter 26.7mm, die axis 0o, c. 123 - 104 B.C.; obverse Cista mystica with half-open lid, from which a snake emerges, all within wreath of ivy with berries; reverse bow-case holding strung bow and ornamented with an apluster, flanked on each side by a snake with head erect, ΠA monogram (control) above between heads of snakes, straps from case draped over snakes below, Pergamon monogram to left, snake entwined thyrsos to right; SOLD




  







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