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milne 655 of Trajan

Trajan Billon Tetradrachm of Alexandria. Year 15 = 112-113 AD. AVT TRAIAN CEB GERM DAKIK, laureate head right / LIE in exergue, Agathodaemon serpent standing erect, head crowned, holding caduceus & corn ears. BMC 393.

Lot No.8027. VF.

$ 150.

Ex James Lovette, author of Biblical Related Coins, and Jim Clark, with original ticket.

Agathodaemon: In the Egyptian mythology, Kneph is the unmade and eternal deity according to Plutarch. Kneph, the Eternal Unrevealed God, a symbol of creative force, the personification of generative power in potentia and actu; the idea of the Spirit of God, is represented heiroglyphically by a snake emblem of Eternity encircling a water urn, with its head hovering over the primal waters, or the dewy womb of the morning, which it incubates with its breath, as the incubation of the Spirit of God upon the face of the waters, representing the Demiurgos (or Logos). The serpent is also the Agathodaemon, 'yadri Tiixi' (good genie of fortune) or benevolent spirit, giving impulses, acting as a sort of messenger between mortals and the gods. Compare with Agathon Plato's Supreme Deity, literally, The Good. This connects with the Ophite serpent (Gnostic fraternity in Egypt, and one of the earliest sects of Gnosticism) and the Agathodaemon-Christos, as the Ophites called Agathodaemon Ophis and recognized it as the Logos and Divine Wisdom, Healer and Saviour, which in the Bacchanalian Mysteries was represented by a serpent or phallos in a winnowing basket or on a pole. With the Gnostics the Serpent represented Wisdom in Eternity an aspect of the World Soul (Anima/Spiritus Mundi). In Indian mythos, it is Narayana, the Spirit of God moving on the waters of space, holding in his mouth an Egg, a symbol of evolution. The Egyptian uraeus was always closely associated with the divine kingship of the pharoah. During the Roman period, the agathodaemon was identified with Sarapis, while the uraeus was sacred to Isis, as she had used it to gain magic. Many homes in Classical good and ritual canibalism.

Trajan (98-117 AD) was responsible for a great expansion of the Roman Empire and its economy. This and his long reign have given us an abundance of coin types in the highest artistic style of Roman coin art.