By Charles Morgan and Hubert Walker for CoinWeek ….
Is there anything better suited to honor the famous figures of history than a coin?
Different artifacts associated with an individual may still exist, but these objects are frequently irreplaceable and irreproducible, with much of their appeal based on a personal connection to the individual instead of intrinsic worth—though even that can be enhanced, as coins owned by famous people enjoy the same kind of reflected glamour.
Extant works of art may have been commissioned by an individual or even portray them; sometimes both conditions are true. Sometimes individuals are famous for the art they themselves produced. But unless you have the budget to collect it or manage a museum, you must go to the art yourself; it does not come to you.
Various places and buildings associated with a given individual might be established to house their art or artifacts if they are famous or important enough. A museum or two might house a collection of such items for a limited time.
But a coin? A coin, it seems, can last forever. It often has value in and of itself, and, assuming you haven’t collected it, a coin goes wherever you do. This is because nothing as durable as a coin is as mobile, and nothing as mobile as a coin is as durable. And whether by design or just a happy coincidence, this fact wasn’t lost on our leaders.
The Propaganda Value of Coins
We’ve talked about propaganda before.
Most coins are propaganda of one sort or another. The ancient turtle coins of Aegina and the silver owls of Athens, for example, served as marketing material and advance press for their home cities wherever they circulated, projecting both power and a brand into the world.
And of course, innumerable kings, queens, tyrants, and pretenders have historically sought to strengthen their own positions by placing themselves or symbols of significance (including other people) on the coinage they control. Indeed, controlling the production of money and deciding who or what goes on it is one way to “frame the narrative.” Done effectively, the people come to believe that their money, with its particular constellation of gods, heroes, and ideals on display, means something and has worth beyond whatever precious metals it may or may not contain. This meaning and worth, in turn, becomes something to be exploited by the powerful, whether for personal gain, the greater good, or some admixture of the two.
Keep that in mind as you consider our list of the Top 10 Women on Coins.
Also, keep in mind that we make no claim to objectivity. This is a purely subjective survey, arbitrarily limited to 10 women. We applied no mathematical methodology to our choices and examined no statistics. Nevertheless, some deference to generally accepted notions of “importance” and “greatness” was paid. We realize one or two selections may be more “obscure” than the others. But we hope that by writing about them we’ve satisfied a curiosity you didn’t even know you had, perhaps starting with…
10.) Marianne
Marianne is the spiritual grandmother… of the American Silver Eagle.
Marianne is the national symbol of the Republic of France, a fusion of the personifications of Liberty and Reason. Born of the 18th-century Enlightenment, she has stood for Democracy at its best and, sometimes, at its worst.
As with her cousin across the Atlantic, Marianne was conceived as an intentional break from monarchical representation conventions. This is only natural since her first appearance was on a 1789 medal honoring the storming of the Bastille, a Parisian fort used as a state prison. The Storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, is often considered the initial conflict of the French Revolution (much like the First “Battle” of Fort Sumter was to the American Civil War).
During the First Republic, established by the Revolution in 1792, Marianne is portrayed in repose, but by the Reign of Terror in 1793, she is portrayed as a more violent, bare-breasted figure leading revolutionaries into battle. After the Terror, she loses some of her fearsomeness, but a precedent for representing her dual nature had been set.
After the Napoleonic Era, in which she was used as a subversive symbol, came the Second Republic and the revolutionary year of 1848. This time, the republic embraced both versions as needed: the bare-breasted militant wearing a Phrygian cap and a red corsage, and a more conservatively demeaned Marianne, whose notable features include rays of sunlight around her head—much like the Statue of Liberty, which was designed by the French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.
In 1849, she made her first appearance on a French postage stamp, as frequent a home for her as French coins and paper money.
Between the start of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, the Third Republic made much use of Marianne as a symbol of the French nation. It was a time of nation-building and the rise of nationalism across Europe, and many of the national symbols we associate with Western Europe have, if not their origins, then at least their “formalizations” born out of this period. The version of Marianne we are familiar with today is based on the main figure in Triumph of the Republic, a sculpture created by artist Aimé-Jules Dalou in 1899 and located at the Place de la Nation in Paris.
Perhaps one of the most influential portrayals of Marianne comes from this period: sculptor-engraver Oscar Roty’s design for La Semeuse (1897), otherwise known as The Sower, from which Adolph Weinman drew a heavy amount of inspiration for his Walking Liberty Half Dollar obverse design in 1916.
Yes, Marianne is the spiritual grandmother of the design of the American Silver Eagle bullion coin.
Then, in 1940, the Nazi war machine occupied the seat of government in Paris along with the northern and western regions of the country. A southern district bordering Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and the Mediterranean Sea—known as Vichy France for its substitute capital in Vichy—was “allowed” (for a time) to administer itself, although it was subservient to the German regime. And like the French have done in all such instances, they resisted. And one of the symbols of that resistance was Marianne.
After the liberation of France by Allied forces in 1944 and into the immediate postwar period and beyond, there was not as much social and psychological need for such propaganda, and the French became less personally invested in such symbols even though Marianne continued to appear on coins and currency in a formal manner. She was the last person portrayed on the French franc before the changeover to the euro, and her effigy has adorned the national side of different French euros since 1999.
9.) Cleopatra
Cleopatra (lived 69 BCE – 30 BCE) entered the mythology and cultural memory of Western European culture long ago, but that romance still exerts an attraction today. Depending on what a word like “great” means to you, she also represents some of the quandaries of being labeled one of the great women of history. Equal weight is given to her reputed beauty and charm as is given to her iron will and deft (if ultimately doomed) leadership. A descendant of the Macedonian general Ptolemy I Soter, the successor of Alexander the Great in Egypt, her commitment to her adopted homeland and its people not only won hearts and minds but also motivated everything she did that has come down to us in both legend and fact. This commitment, too, is a recurring theme in this list.
Cleopatra VII Philopator (“Beloved of (the) father”) was born in 69 BCE to the pharaoh Ptolemy XII Auletes. He was regarded as a weak king and a bad ruler, and in fact, a native rebellion forced him into a three-year exile in Rome between 58 and 55 BCE. His first- and second-oldest daughters, Cleopatra VI Tryphaena and Berenice IV, ruled in his stead. He returned to power with the help of the Roman general Pompey the Great. Upon his return, he beheaded his daughter Berenice (Cleopatra VI died while he was in exile) and appointed Cleopatra (our Cleopatra, barely a teenager) his co-ruler.
When her father died in 51 BCE, the 18-year-old Cleopatra married and became co-pharaoh with her 10-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIII. The duo had to contend with many of the problems their father had left for them, and Cleopatra wasn’t about to let another Ptolemy muck it up again. Later in the year, she made her move, removing her brother’s name from government letterhead and his portrait from the coinage. With this act, she became the first female to appear alone on Egyptian coins.
Dealing with yet another entanglement of her father’s making, she soon made enemies of the Romans who had helped her father regain power. This, along with a conspiracy of her brother’s supporters, resulted in her overthrow in 48 BCE—just in time for another Roman civil war.
When Pompey sought sanctuary in Alexandria after losing the Battle of Pharsalus to Julius Caesar, Ptolemy XIII had him beheaded. He then made a present of Pompey’s head to Caesar, who arrived a few days later following Pompey’s forces to Egypt. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect than Ptolemy intended, and Caesar captured the city for himself.
This was a golden opportunity for Cleopatra.
If you’ve seen Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963), then you’ve seen how she smuggled herself naked into Caesar’s private chambers in a rolled-up rug. The ancient writer Plutarch tells the story, and it’s a good one, but no one can prove that it actually happened. What we know did happen was that Cleopatra became Caesar’s mistress and gave birth to a son, Caesarion. Yet despite Cleopatra’s efforts, Caesar would not make Caesarion his heir, adopting his nephew Octavian instead. Still, she got her throne back, albeit alongside a second brother.
After Caesar returned to Rome, she followed him there, where the married Caesar scandalized Roman society with this none-too-discreet affair. She was in the city when he was assassinated on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BCE. Her brother soon died (poison?) and Caesarion became Cleopatra’s heir and co-ruler.
Meanwhile, Octavian and Roman general Marc Antony fought another civil war against the party of the assassins. Because of her allegiance to Caesar, Cleopatra supported his nephew and his allies. After the dust settled, Antony ordered her to meet with him in 40 BCE; naturally, her seduction of Marc Antony was complete and total. She bore him twins.
Years later, in 36 BCE, Antony—married to Octavian’s sister—returned to Alexandria for good. This did not help relations between the two Roman leaders, and yet another civil war took place. Antony was ultimately defeated at the naval Battle of Actium in 31 BCE when Cleopatra and her fleet abandoned the fight and Marc Antony followed her.
Before Octavian could capture them, both Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. Legend says she took an asp to her bosom and died from a snakebite.
8.) Livia
After the death of Marc Antony, Octavian was the de facto ruler of the Roman world. The Roman Senate would grant him the title Augustus in 27 BCE, the year that marks the beginning of the Roman Empire. Livia was his wife, and she would become the first empress of Rome.
Livia Drusilla (58 BCE – 29 CE) was born into a political family; it just happened to be the wrong one. Her father and first husband supported the assassins of Julius Caesar and fought against the faction of Octavian and Marc Antony. When the assassins were defeated (her father committing suicide alongside Brutus and Cassius), her husband joined Marc Antony in his fight against Octavian.
Having received amnesty from Octavian, Livia and her young family (including future emperor Tiberius), returned to Rome from their refuge in Greece. Octavian was sufficiently charmed upon meeting her that he eventually divorced his current wife (on the day she gave birth to their only child, no less) and forced Livia’s husband to divorce her. The union lasted over 50 years until the death of Augustus (Octavian) in 14 CE.
Over that time she served as the living embodiment of Augustus’s revival of conservative family values, which lent much moral force to Augustus’s campaign to reform Roman society. Exploiting the supposed moral superiority or position of women in society is one of the major reasons we see women used on coins as a means of propaganda; to that end, Livia became the first Roman woman to appear on the provincial coinage of the Empire in 16 BCE.
But she was also Augustus’s most trusted advisor, and fiercely ambitious when it came to the political fortunes of her sons Drusus and Tiberius—both of them fathered by her first husband. Several mysterious deaths later, Augustus had little choice but to adopt Tiberius as his heir and future emperor in 4 CE. British writer Robert Graves, author of I, Claudius (1934), did much to popularize the idea of Livia as a politically-motivated poisoner, but he based his story on rumors that had been around since Livia’s own lifetime.
After Augustus died and Tiberius ascended the throne, Livia continued to enjoy status and power. Eventually, however, she outwore her welcome in her son’s court, to the point where, in 29 CE when she died, the emperor didn’t even attend her funeral. Not only that, but he undid any and all honors that the Roman Senate had bestowed upon her. And in a peculiarly Roman twist, Tiberius refused to deify his mother, which she desperately wanted for herself—not out of vanity (though who knows?) but because Livia believed that the only way she would escape punishment for the sins of this life was to become a god.
Tiberius died in 37 CE and was succeeded by his great-nephew Caligula. At the death of Caligula in 41 CE, Livia’s grandson Claudius became emperor. It was Claudius who restored his grandmother’s honors and, finally, deified her.
But while she did appear on provincial issues, Livia was never directly portrayed on Roman coinage. Instead, allegorical figures or female deities such as Vesta (goddess of the hearth and family) were clearly modeled on her. And oddly enough, the majority of issues were released during the reign of her son Tiberius.
7.) Isabella I of Spain
Most Americans know Isabella I of Spain (1451 – 1504) as the “Isabella” half of “Ferdinand and Isabella.” They are the royal duo who sent Christopher Columbus to the New World. But that mission was only possible after the completion of the centuries-long Spanish Reconquista during their reign, with a victorious campaign against the Muslim Emirate of Granada. Isabella was a significant part of the unification of Spain as a modern country.
She was born the daughter of John II, king of Castile and León. At the time of her birth and right up until the successful Reconquista, the Spain we know today consisted of several smaller kingdoms, both Christian and Muslim. Her older half-brother Henry IV became king after the death of their father. Following years of forced isolation and the military rebellion of a group of nobles—who first took the pair’s younger brother Alfonso as champion before he died of the plague—Isabella became Henry’s legal heir.
Since the political situation in this divided Spain was dicey at best, Isabella had been promised in marriage to the son of a potential ally by the age of six. Her husband-to-be was none other than Ferdinand of Aragon, whom she would eventually marry… but not until the court intrigue and political machinations had reached “Byzantine” levels. The betrothal to Ferdinand was called off at least once, and she was promised to several other candidate grooms before everyone involved finally agreed that yes, Isabella would marry Ferdinand. In the end, they still needed special permission from the Pope since they were second cousins. They didn’t get this papal permission, but a forgery made by the Aragonese cardinal Rodrigo Borgia—the future Pope Alexander VI and patriarch of the notorious Renaissance-era family—and a well-timed elopement made the marriage happen.
She inherited the Castilian throne in 1474 and immediately had to deal with plots against her. War with Portugal lasted until 1476, but at its conclusion, Ferdinand and Isabella were secure in their positions. Isabella then did two things that solidified her place as the rightful monarch. She personally put down another rebellion while Ferdinand was campaigning elsewhere, and she also bore him a son. This is yet another way in which “greatness” means something different for women in history than it does for men; both the “manly” arts of war and statecraft and “womanly” attributes like fertility are often required of them.
And much like Cleopatra, she was forced to fix the mess her male predecessor left behind. Frequently, the enactment of her reforms was strict and unforgiving, leading to such tragedies as the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. In this regard, she shares a similarly mixed legacy with Catherine the Great of Russia, whom we will learn more about below.
With the conquest of Granada in 1492, Isabella was ready to embark on an even more ambitious project. Further imperial expansion having been stymied by the Portuguese presence closer to home, she financed the expedition of Christoforo Colombo, better known in English as Christopher Columbus. His goal was to establish a new trading route to the East Indies for Spain, though it’s possible that the Spanish had become aware of the New World already through its extended war with Portugal and needed to maintain a cover story to evade Portuguese intervention.
Once Columbus claimed the New World for Spain, a new day would soon arise for the Spanish Empire, born of the gold and especially the silver of the Americas—not to mention the heinous acts it took to extract this treasure from the land and from the people who already lived there. As it is, Queen Isabella was the first foreign ruler, let alone queen, to appear on a coin issued by the United States—the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition Quarter.
6.) Catherine II of Russia (“The Great”)
Empress Catherine II of Russia (1729 – 1796) was not the first nor the only female ruler of Russia, but she was the most famous, and for her achievements is commonly granted the epithet “The Great.”
Catherine was born Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg, a German princess from an old noble family. She was wed to her cousin, who became Tsar Peter III of Russia since he was the grandson of Peter the Great. Catherine’s Peter was also German, but unfortunately, he had no interest whatsoever in Russia, the culture, or its people, and he pursued a pro-Prussian policy once on the throne. His rule lasted all of six months. A coup led by his wife deposed him, and he died under mysterious circumstances.
But the key to this episode takes place a couple of decades earlier when Princess Sophie first visited Russia under Empress Elizabeth in 1744. Sophie’s mother had schemed long and hard to perhaps one day make Sophie the empress of Russia, and Sophie, to her credit, decided to embrace this possible future role for herself and do whatever it took to be a worthy ruler. She became a favorite of the empress, going to great lengths to learn the Russian language and get to know the Russian people. She even converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity, which very much endeared her to the Russians. This is where she received the name Catherine (Yekaterina). So, after overthrowing her husband and possibly killing him in 1762, Princess Yekaterina became empress of Russia.
Catherine then proceeded to transform Russia into a European power. The most territorial expansion in the empire’s history occurred during her reign, with about 200,000 square miles added to its domains. Much of this land came under Russian control as a result of the military defeat of old enemies—such as the Turks, from whom the Crimean Peninsula was wrested in 1783. New colonies were also established, such as Alaska.
Catherine embarked on her own modernization campaign, like her grandfather-by-marriage Tsar Peter the Great had begun. She, too, admired the ideas of the Enlightenment but turned away from the intellectual movement once the French Revolution began. Other reforms were designed to better control or integrate the Empire’s various religious and ethnic groups, such as Muslims and Jews. Some were successful; others produced mixed results. For many Russians, however, the reign of Catherine the Great represents the Golden Age of the Russian Empire.
Interestingly, the Assignation ruble—the first paper money issued in Russia—came out during her rule. Used between 1769 and 1849, it was originally valued on par with the silver one-ruble coin, but as time went on it became considerably undervalued in comparison.
5.) Irene of Athens
Like much of the Middle Ages, the history of the Byzantine Empire is fascinating and complex. Unfortunately, it isn’t a familiar topic to many Americans. Numismatically, it is an exceedingly rich field of study, and the next woman on our list is responsible for a good number of intriguing pieces.
Irene Sarantapechaina, or Irene of Athens, was empress of the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire for almost 30 years, though the precise meaning of that title changed over the decades.
From 775 to 780, she was the wife, or empress consort, of Emperor Leo IV. This meant she bore the title of empress and enjoyed the elevated status it conferred but did not wield any military or political power herself. The marriage was arranged by Leo’s father, Emperor Constantine V. The couple’s son, born in 771, was named Constantine in his honor. The elder Constantine died in 775, and the 25-year-old Leo became emperor.
If you are not familiar with Byzantine history, one important thread in the story is the battle between the iconoclasts and the iconodules. Christianity has always condemned the veneration of false idols, but by the eighth century, many began to feel the adulation focused on relics, holy images, and pilgrimage sites had gone too far. A movement was born that sought to restore the religion to the way it was practiced in an already-idealized past by literally destroying images (icons) used in worship. “Iconoclast” is Greek for “icon-breaker.” Islam may also have been an influence on this re-examination of Christian practice.
However, many in the Church believed differently and continued to view icons as vital spiritual aids, often holy in their own right. One word for supporters of the use of icons in Christian worship is “iconodule.”
Why is this important? Leo IV was an iconoclast. Around 780, he discovered, much to his chagrin, that his wife Irene had been a secret iconodule the whole time. Oddly, he died that same year.
After Irene became a widow, the royal couple’s son became the emperor Constantine VI at nine years old. Because of his tender age, his mother acted as regent, appearing with him on the obverse of gold coins produced during this time. These coins also featured Leo IV, Constantine V, and Leo III on the reverse—to honor illustrious ancestors, no doubt, but perhaps also to add legitimacy to her claim to power.
Par for the course as far as regencies and power-sharing arrangements seem to go, the son eventually grew to resent his mother’s sway. By the year 790, he was actively conspiring against her. It didn’t go well; by 792, new coins featured Irene by herself on the obverse, with the “emperor” on the reverse. This was quite the numismatic slap in the face.
In 797, Constantine was finally ensnared in a conspiracy of his mother’s making and died shortly after having his eyes gouged out (eye-gouging and nose-slitting were Byzantine specialties). With this, Irene became sole ruler of the empire, and to make sure nobody forgot it, she issued a new coinage with her portrait on both the obverse and the reverse. Few men have dared be so bold.
This was the Byzantine Empire, though, and Irene herself was deposed by yet another conspiracy in 802. She died in exile a year later, though with her nose and eyes intact.
Her reign is notable for the restoration of icons to Eastern Christianity and the Greek Church’s reconnection with Rome. Besides making overtures to the Pope, she recognized Charlemagne as a rising power in the West, going so far as to foster an alliance in 781 by arranging for Leo to marry one of Charlemagne’s daughters. It didn’t last; Irene canceled the marriage a few years later, and when Charlemagne was crowned “Roman” emperor by the Pope in 800 CE, it was as successor to Irene’s son, Constantine VI, since the Roman Church did not acknowledge a female on the throne as legitimate.
Irene’s reign was also contemporaneous with that of Harun al-Rashid, the gifted ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. He invaded Turkey in 782 and, after the ill-timed defection of one of her generals, Irene was forced to pay an exorbitant tribute to the Muslims.
One legend about Irene states that she used the masculine version of the Greek word basileus (“king” or “emperor”) to refer to herself. If true, it would be in keeping with many other historic female rulers who adopted a sort of male “drag”—sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally—in order to legitimate their rule. Ancient Egyptian queens, for example, had to wear stylized fake beards when they became pharaoh. In Irene’s case, a single gold coin from Sicily includes basileus as part of the inscription, but the evidence so far overwhelmingly points to her use of the feminine version basilissa for all other official communications.
4.) Mary Mother of Jesus
One of the most important and most portrayed women in Art, Mary also takes a high spot in our list of women on coins. The basic outline of her story is as follows, though it is understandably intertwined with that of Jesus and the religious views of those who came after.
Mary (Mariam, Maryam) was a Jewish inhabitant of the village of Nazareth in the Roman province of Judaea. She was engaged to Joseph, but before their marriage could be formally completed, the Holy Spirit conceived in her the child Jesus. Once married, the couple moved to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.
According to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, she was a virgin before this event and remained a virgin afterward. Luke also states that the archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary earlier in her life and announced to her that God had chosen her to be the mother of Jesus—an event referred to as the Annunciation. Interestingly, according to Matthew, an angel had also appeared to Joseph, telling him to marry the Virgin Mother.
After the Three Magi visited King Herod in Jerusalem, asking where to find the newborn King of the Jews, an angel visited Joseph in a dream and warned him that Herod meant to dispose of the child Jesus. Joseph was told to take his family into Egypt until it was safe to return. Herod died in 4 BCE, and when word got to Egypt, the Holy Family sought to return to their home in Judah. Unfortunately, Herod’s tyrannical son Archelaus had become king, so the family traveled instead to Mary’s birthplace of Nazareth.
There, she presumably raised Jesus and her other children and tended to her family’s needs until Jesus began his ministry at the age of 33. Only one incident from his childhood is mentioned in the New Testament (Luke): when, at 12 years old, Jesus stayed at the Temple in Jerusalem, inquiring of and listening to the priests for a whole day while the rest of his family—apparently not realizing he was missing—returned home. The story emphasizes Jesus’ divine nature and positions it as superior to his role as a member of Mary and Joseph’s family, but one can’t help but infer a devout upbringing facilitated by his mother.
Mary was present at Jesus’ crucifixion and, according to some ancient sources, helped maintain the early church in the years immediately after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and assumption into Heaven. For this reason alone—the preservation of what would become the single greatest unifying cultural force in European history—Mary’s place on the world’s coinage is justified (assuming commemoration on coins is something you “earn”). Yet, to the faithful, it is her role as the Blessed Mother (and the various functions she performs on mankind’s behalf) that is most important.
Combine the two reasons—cultural continuity and religious adulation—and you get Mary’s first appearance on a coin: a gold Byzantine solidus of Leo VI (ruled 886–912 CE). The solidus was a gold coin originally introduced by Roman emperor Diocletian in 301 CE. The Roman Empire’s first Christian ruler, Constantine I (“Constantine the Great”), greatly expanded its use, replacing the older gold aureus in 312. The solidus had a powerful influence on the economies and money of much of the formerly Roman world until the monetary reforms of the early 11th century.
Other Byzantine issues, such as a gold histamenon of John I Tzimiskes (ruled 969–976) or the gold scyphate coinage of John II Comnenus (ruled 1118–1143), feature the Virgin Mary standing next to the emperor. On these coins, she is either placing a crown upon his head or holding a cross with him. Such pairings convey the potent propaganda message that the emperor has been ordained by God to rule and, by extension, that his money is good, too.
Mary, of course, appears on almost every coin that portrays a Nativity theme, but as CoinWeek’s Mike Markowitz noted previously, Nativity scenes are remarkably sparse in the numismatic record. For instance, it takes almost 1,000 years before a Nativity scene shows up again on two coins: a rare gold five-ducat and a silver quarter-ducat commemorative set issued by Pope Clement VII. A silver testone minted by Pope Gregory XIII (of Gregorian calendar fame) also featured Mary in a Nativity tableau. Similar coins were issued in Germany, with different cities releasing various types of silver thalers featuring the Holy Family.
3.) The Goddess Athena
Never mind coins for a moment. The very “Cradle of Western Civilization” and the “Birthplace of Democracy”—the city of Athens—is named for the next woman on our list: Athena, the Ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, war, olives, and weaving. Like Mary, she, too, was a virgin.
Her worship predates the arrival of the Indo-Europeans in the Balkan Peninsula, which means Athena is older than what we casually understand as Greek culture. Some, like the late Martin Bernal, remind us of her possible roots in Africa and the Middle East. This is important because Ancient Greece (the time and place that made the coins) had a considerably easier time acknowledging the influence of foreign, non-European (and non-white) cultures on their own society than Westerners of the 18th and 19th centuries did.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to scholars of myth, who, besides seeing too many similarities between the world’s stories and beliefs to think of either culture or mythology as discreet, self-sufficient, and original, also know that within one culture the stories change as the times and the needs of the people change. In other words, the biography of a god or goddess isn’t such a simple thing. But the classic story of Athena is as follows:
Metis, the goddess of prudence, was the counselor and first wife of Zeus. As luck would have it, she was with child. Unfortunately, her mother-in-law, the Earth itself (Gaea), prophesied to Zeus that if Metis had a son, this son would one day overthrow him. Taking heed of his mother’s warning but unable or unwilling to do without Metis’s advice, Zeus devised a plan. He convinced her to play a game with him: the two would change themselves into different kinds of animals and challenge the other to change into a new animal to one-up the other’s previous form. Eventually, Metis transformed herself into a fly. Zeus seized the moment and swallowed her whole.
From then on, she dutifully guided his actions from her seat in his head (but judging from the other stories told about Zeus’s behavior, perhaps she got her revenge after all). In the meantime, as Metis’s pregnancy went on, she fashioned a battle helmet for her future child, giving Zeus terrible headaches. The pain was too much to bear, and his tortured cries brought the Olympian gods racing to his side. Zeus’s son Hephaestus, the divine blacksmith and inventor (whom Zeus had crippled by throwing from Mt. Olympus like so much lightning when he dared side with his mother Hera during an argument), split open his father’s head. In this way—from the world’s first migraine—was the fully-formed Athena born.
As for being the patron goddess of Athens, this was the result of a contest between Athena and Poseidon, Zeus’s brother and the god of the sea. The rules were simple: each god would give the city one gift, and whichever gift the citizens liked better would determine the winner. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident, whereby a mighty salt-water spring arose from the crack. Athena gave the city the olive tree.
The pride Athens took in its olive farming industry is evinced on the reverse of practically every “New Style” silver Athenian tetradrachm coin ever produced. Minted between 164 BCE and approximately 42 BCE, New Style tetradrachms retained the owl motif (Athena’s most famous symbol and companion animal) of the earlier, “Archaic” style (produced since circa 500 BCE, when the four-drachma coin gained market dominance) but now included a clay amphora—a vessel commonly used to store grain, wine, olive oil, and a wide variety of other products. Athena herself gained an impressive new martial helmet and a more naturalistic, less transcendent countenance.
The Athenian “owl” circulated the width and breadth of the Hellenic world and beyond. It served as an early trade currency, trusted everywhere for its purity and purchasing power. It projected the cultural, economic, and military might of the ancient Athenians into every corner of Western Civilization. An Indian merchant selling his wares under the Mauryan Empire and a Celtic tinsmith in Gaul both recognized the power of the goddess on the obverse, even if they approached her using different names.
2.) Maria Theresa
A later trade currency would also bear the portrait of a powerful female, though one entirely human—all too human.
Empress Maria Theresa was born in Vienna, Austria, on May 13, 1717. Her father was Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, the last surviving male to bear the name Habsburg; the birth of a daughter was not an auspicious event. Consequently, Charles continued to hope for a boy (he had two more daughters) and never prepared Maria for anything other than being someone else’s queen. Not that there’s any historical precedent for a queen consort becoming a ruler (see Empress Irene, above).
But it’s doubly strange, considering that Charles had issued his Pragmatic Sanction in 1713—four years before Maria Theresa was born. The sanction attempted to make it legal for a female to inherit the Habsburg domains. He then spent the rest of his life (otherwise known as Maria Theresa’s formative years) making territorial and diplomatic concessions in order to secure its acceptance by the courts and rulers of Europe.
When he died in 1740, Maria Theresa inherited the Habsburg domains, but her father had left the country bankrupt. Moreover, several major European powers (including France and Prussia) immediately reneged on the agreements they had made with Charles VI and contested her right to rule, initiating the War of Austrian Succession.
One important note: all Maria Theresa had inherited was sovereignty over Habsburg lands. She had not become monarch over the Holy Roman Empire. For one thing, it was an elected office; for another, women were not eligible to vote and, ipso facto, could not become empress in her own right. She did, however, maneuver to support her husband Francis Stephen’s claim to the throne by making him co-ruler of Austria and thereby giving him formidable rank and real estate holdings within the Empire (he was originally from France).
Yet while the precariously positioned ruler of a ruined economy might seem an odd choice for numismatic immortality, it was in the first year of her reign that the silver Maria Theresa thaler made its debut. It was quickly accepted throughout the German-speaking realms of Europe and eventually became the most widely used trade dollar in the planet’s history.
The first few years of the war served up major losses for Maria Theresa and her cause, with the loss of important territories and even one of her enemies being elected Holy Roman emperor. To gain much-needed support from Hungary, she adopted the masculine titles of archduke and king, a formal drag that many female rulers throughout history (like Cleopatra and Irene of Athens, for example) have found necessary. It also helped that by this time she had produced a male heir. Again, as we saw with Isabella I of Spain, to rule, women must fulfill both “masculine” and “feminine” requirements.
Still, after eight battering years and humiliating peace treaties, Maria Theresa—through determination and force of will (and often while pregnant)—managed to hold on to her family’s domains and get her husband elected emperor.
The Seven Years’ War followed eight years later. Known as the French and Indian War in the United States, it was, arguably, a “World War.” Maria Theresa sought to regain territory lost to Prussia in the previous war and convinced Russia and France to go to war against Prussia and Britain. Austria lost the war, but besides failing to recapture the lost territories, didn’t suffer any political setbacks. The rest of the world, however, was changed considerably as Great Britain became the dominant power in the New World, setting the stage for the eventual rise of the United States of America.
Her husband Francis died in 1765, and her son Joseph became emperor. Maria Theresa made him co-ruler as well, for similar reasons. And similarly to Irene, Cleopatra, and countless other co-regents throughout history, they didn’t get along.
She died in 1780, the last of the Habsburg line. She was survived by 11 of her 16 children, including Marie Antoinette. A date freeze was implemented on all Maria Theresa thalers produced after her death.
During her reign, she successfully reorganized Austria’s economy by taxing the nobility and reformed the military by establishing a standing army. After two of her daughters died of smallpox and she herself contracted the disease in the epidemic of 1767, Maria Theresa introduced smallpox inoculation to Austria. She instituted mandatory public schooling for children in 1775 (though she failed to fund it). A religious conservative, she nonetheless outlawed witch-burning in 1776. No fan of the Enlightenment, she still managed to make Austria a culturally important and modernizing force in the 19th-century world.
But she was a “complicated” figure—that dreaded euphemism for the misdeeds of “great” men in an era that can no longer believe in the “Great Man” Theory of History. Her version of Roman Catholicism did not allow for ready tolerance of other religions, and it is from this source that her well-known anti-Semitism rises. She sought to deport Jews from the country and pummeled them economically with heavy taxation, though late in her reign Maria Theresa’s treatment of the Jewish community had improved relatively.
In 1857, her great-great-grandson, Emperor Franz Joseph I, gave the Maria Theresa silver thaler its official status as a trade dollar. The coins were so important to global commerce that numerous mints around
1.) Elizabeth II
Which brings us to Queen Elizabeth II.
Of all the women on world coins on our list, she represents a unique case—the ultimate impact of her coinage is only now beginning to be settled. Generations of historians, economists, and numismatists have studied Maria Theresa and her eponymous thaler. And while there’s always room for additional research and discovery, the general outlines of the coin’s usage, its scope, and its impact on the world-at-large are thought to be generally understood.
But imagine a future archaeologist happening upon the coinage of today hundreds of years from now. If he or she is looking at a representative sample of types from around the world, the percentage of coins with Elizabeth’s portrait on the obverse would have to lead to some amusing assumptions should much of our records be lost to time. Was she the most important or powerful leader the world has ever known? Or was she the object of veneration of an incredibly widespread fertility cult?
The sheer number of coins produced in countries formerly, currently, and yet-to-be part of the British Empire that bear her portrait is staggering—and something to think about.
Elizabeth was born to the future King George VI on April 21, 1926. Her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in 1936, at which point her father became king and she became his presumptive heir. After the national trauma of World War II, she married Prince Philip in 1947. Her first child, Prince Charles, was born in 1948. While the pair was in Kenya in 1952, her father died, and she became Queen on February 6.
She became the longest-lived English monarch in late 2007, and on September 9, 2015, she became the longest-reigning British monarch ever, surpassing her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria in both instances. Queen Elizabeth II died on September 8, 2022, at the age of 96, having completed 70 years on the throne.
A lot happened in the seven decades of her reign, much of it being living memory and much of it televised. We feel less of a need to build up the Queen’s story. Suffice it to say that Elizabeth presided over a period of extreme change for Great Britain, Western Civilization, and the world in general—not the least of which was the postwar dismantling of the British Imperial system.
But it’s been an age of the image—a postmodern age, one might say—and the British monarch’s role, Elizabeth’s role, for most of the 20th and 21st centuries, was significantly more symbolic than functional*. Much like the copious not-intended-for-circulation coinage from exotic island outposts that feature her effigy, her death now marks the end of an era for global numismatics, triggering the process of replacing her portrait on currencies across the Commonwealth realms with that of King Charles III.
*Queen Elizabeth II did have the power to dissolve Parliament and rule without it (as would any monarch of the United Kingdom), but she was limited by the Bill of Rights 1689.
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