Ignoring Jaws

[Allan D2]

So, my main collecting focus is on Greek silver fractionals, mostly those that depict various marine life.

It certainly makes sense that the various powers in the eastern Mediterranean would look to the sea to represent themselves, and so we see a large numbers of dolphins and tunny fish and the like.

But then I started wondering about the marine life that isn't depicted. In particular, where are the sharks?

Why aren't there sharks depicted on Greek coins (6th to 4th c BCE)? (Or are there and I'm just missing them?)

Any thoughts, ideas, or perspectives would be appreciated.

All the best.

[JBF]

Dolphins were considered by the Greeks to be the perfect friend to man (because they were friendly to him, but did not get any advantage out of it).  The rest of the critters are probably sea-food caught en masse.  One can eat shark, but shark can eat you, therefore eating shark could result in a kind of accidental cannibalism, which is an unappealing notion.  But that is a guess.  I don't know if other top (land) predators would ever be eaten.  Sharks have a bad reputation over all.  Aristotle in his biological writings _might_ talk about sharks.

[peterpil19]

Interesting question.

One of the collectors here, Steve P, collects coins which feature animals, so hopefully he will chime in on whether he has come across one previously.

Searching 'shark' on acsearch yields no relevant results so more likely than not there are not any, unless sharks were represented on coins in a different manner.

Peter

[orfew]

I do not have a coin with a shark. However, I do have one with a Dolphin that has rather large teeth.

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-140176

It is a medieval coin of Charles VII of France as Dauphin.

[Jay GT4]

The Mediterranean isn't really known for sharks.  Yes there are many different species but they are rarely seen.  I was actually surprised that great whites come into the Mediterranean although one report says they haven't been seen in over 30 years.  Perhaps most sharks are in deep water where ancient fishermen wouldn't have seen them.  Most ancient ships stayed close to shore and didn't venture out into open water if they could avoid it.  I don't think they would have been a common site to the ancients and the average person wouldn't have ever seen a shark, unlike dolphin or tuna.  But that's just my guess.

[Stkp]

According to an article that I found, shark attacks in the Mediterranean were recorded by ancient Greek historians and do occur from time to time in the Mediterranean: http://www.sharkinfo.ch/SI2_98e/mediterranean.html. While sunbathing and swimming were probably not common leisure activities for the ancients, I imagine that fisherman and mariners were familiar with sharks. There must be some other explanation. A starting point would be to catalog the types of aquatic life that do appear on ancient Greek coinage. The dolphin, tuna, crab, sea turtle and octopus immediately come to mind. There are probably quite a few others. My expectation is that the list leaves out a wide swath of frequently encountered aquatic life. One might just as well ask why other classes of aquatic life are not represented on coins as ask why sharks, in particular, are not. Stkp

[JBF]

Sounds like a project, go for it!  Of course, there is a little problem in proving a negative, one can say that one has never seen a shark on a coin, but since one doesn't know all coins, one probably cannot conclusively say that sharks are not on coins, but I would guess, that looking at ancient iconography, one _never_ sees sharks.  Although again, I think Aristotle mentions sharks (pup sharks that have live births?) in his biological writings.

But I think if you do your homework, you might have some interesting conclusions.

I would think that ancients avoid sharks if it was at all possible.

[peterpil19]

Perhaps as alluded in my earlier post, sharks were represented differently. Maybe they were not understood exactly for what they were and considered to be sea monsters of some kind?

For instance on Syracusan tetradachms I own, there is a 'ketos' in the exergue of the obverse.  The numiswiki entry for ketos states that it 'denotes a large fish, a whale, a shark, or a sea monster'. Admittedly on the aforementioned coins it looks like a serpent not a shark.

Peter

[peterpil19]

I just looked at all 1,220 search results in acsearch for 'ketos'.  Ketos is consistently shown as a serpent or its head. Could not find a single example which looks remotely a shark. So there goes that theory.

Peter

[Meepzorp]

The Mediterranean isn't really known for sharks.  Yes there are many different species but they are rarely seen.  I was actually surprised that great whites come into the Mediterranean although one report says they haven't been seen in over 30 years.  Perhaps most sharks are in deep water where ancient fishermen wouldn't have seen them.  Most ancient ships stayed close to shore and didn't venture out into open water if they could avoid it.  I don't think they would have been a common site to the ancients and the average person wouldn't have ever seen a shark, unlike dolphin or tuna.  But that's just my guess.

Hi folks,

I agree with Jay. I don't think that sharks are frequently found in the Mediterranean Sea, whereas dolphins and tuna are.

Meepzorp

[Meepzorp]

Hi folks,

Speaking of sharks, which are marine predators, I have a coin that (I think) depicts a dolphin with a fish in its mouth (scroll down, second coin):

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/meepzorp/g_spain_pt03.htm

Meepzorp