OK, I've got a puzzle that is very confusing. I'm trying to
type it out here to
help myself understand it, and in the
hope that someone may know more about the situation than I do.
There was a small city on the
banks of the Maeander near Miletus that was called Myus (or Myous, or Myes). It was never a very large place, and in the 3rd century (if I remember correctly) it was voluntarily absorbed by Miletus and ceased to be an independent political entity. Myus issued very few coins of its own; all were small bronzes and are dated from 350-300BC.
Sear describes three
types:
#4522, AE 15, laureate
Apollo right /
goose right within maeander pattern and MYH above
#4523, AE 11, laureate
Apollo right /
dolphin right with trident below and MY above
#4524, AE 11, laureate Poseidon right /
dolphin right with trident below and MY above
These attributions are pretty widely repeated in other references I have at hand.
*But* (this is the puzzling
part), I now find that some sources are attributing the Poseidon/dolphin
type to a city called Mygissos, said to be in
Caria. If you look at the only two
Myus entries in coinarchives.com you'll see that one specimen is attributed to Myus, and the other to Mygissos as a correction to Myus, thus: "MYGISSOS. Æ-Chalkus, 386/300 v. Chr.; 1,36 g. Kopf
des Poseidon r. mit Lorbeerkranz//Delphin r. über Dreizack.
BMC -;
SNG Cop. 1022 (Myus); SNG v. Aulock 2114 (Myus, korr.
Index 11); SNG Tübingen 3115 (Myus)." From this it appears that most everyone
had given Myus as the
mint, but that
SNG von Aulock alone, in a correction, changed this to Mygissos. I don't have access to a copy of
SNG von Aulock to check what it says, so if anyone has that handy I'm be very glad to know.
I've attached an image of the
coinarchives.com specimen given to Mygissos below.
To confuse matters more, I find one other archived sale of a coin of this
type which attributes it to neither Myus
nor Mygissos, but *
Myndos*, thus: "
Caria,
Myndos (?), 4th century BC, AE 11.6 mm (1.20 gm.).
Obv.: Bearded
head (
Zeus or Poseidon ?) laureate r.
Rev.: M-Y above;
dolphin r. over trident. SNG Helsinki I, 235; SNG Tübingen (Mygissos) 3432." Here an SNG Tübingen reference is given for the Mygissos
attribution; that's one I don't have either, so can't speak to the basis of the
attribution.
Now, "Mygissos" turns out to be an exceedingly obscure location. A
search of
Google for the word turns up only the coin sales mentioned above. "Mygissus" returns nothing; perhaps there is another spelling? A
search of the
Perseus database for Mygissos and Mygissus also returns nothing. I don't find Mygissos mentioned as a
mint (or mentioned at all) in any of the Greek coin references I have, including
Sear. Perhaps it was on the island of Atlantis?
Myndos, by contrast, certainly is attested, as "a coastal town situated
west of Halikarnassos" (
Sear, p. 447), but
Sear lists no coins from
Myndos before the 2nd century, and these Poseidon/dolphin
types are usually placed in the 3rd century. (But then if we don't know where they come from, who knows when they might have been minted.)
So, I think that now expresses the confused state of my understanding. If anyone can clarify the situation (or even confuse it more) I'd be very pleased to hear!
RJO