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Coin of the Month

December 2025: The Olbian Borysthenes Coins

The Coin of this Month is presented by Vladimir Stolba


Among the ancient coins of the northern Black Sea, few are as famous—and as mysterious—as the so-called “Borystheni” of Olbia. These coins, showing a river god on one side and Scythian weapons on the other, belong to a wider cultural landscape that will be at the centre of the IMAGNUM project in the coming years.

On the obverse, we see the bearded head of a river deity with long hair and distinctive horns, always facing left. The reverse shows a Scythian bow in its gorytos (a combined bow-case and quiver) and a scepter-axe, along with an abbreviated name of the city and monograms or abbreviated names of the officials responsible for minting. Although scholars have discussed these coins for more than 200 years, many basic questions still remain. Which river does the god represent—the Dnieper (Borysthenes), or the Southern Bug (Hypanis), at whose mouth Olbia stood? Why do coins from a Greek city feature Scythian weapons and symbols of Scythian royal power? Why are they found in huge numbers far inland, all the way to the area of modern Kyiv? And how long did Olbia mint them?

These coins even left a mark on modern toponymy. When local peasants found coins with the horned, bearded head, they mistook the image for a devil. A small ravine and surrounding area near the village of Pribugskoe was therefore named Chertovatoye—roughly “Devil’s Place”.

Rivers were the lifelines of the Black Sea colonies. They connected the coastal cities with the interior, provided trade routes, and supported local economies—especially through the fish trade. It is no surprise therefore that several colonies, including Olbia-Borysthenes, took their names from major rivers. But images of river gods rarely played a major role in their coinage. In Olbia, over 200 years passed before the river deity finally appeared on coins—in this very series. The coins are usually dated to the period after the siege of the city by Zopyrion, a general of Alexander the Great, around 325 BC. Scholars disagree on how long the minting continued: estimates range from a few decades to nearly a century.

The imagery of these coins spoke to different audiences simultaneously—both the Greeks and their Scythian neighbours. The bow and gorytos were typical Scythian weapons, and Herodotus himself compared the shape of the bow to the outline of the Black Sea. The scepter-axe (sagaris) was also a well-known emblem of Scythian authority, as shown by finds in elite burial mounds. Although Olbia lay on the Southern Bug, ancient tradition often associated it with the Borysthenes (Dnieper) and the shared estuary into which both rivers flowed. Choosing the river god as the main image therefore made perfect sense.

For the Scythians, the figure of Borysthenes was meaningful as well. Their origin myth, recorded by Herodotus, tells that their ancestor Targitaos was the son of Zeus and the daughter of Borysthenes. Another story, preserved by the poet Nikander, names Borysthenes as the father of a local nomadic king. Seen in this light, the Scythian motifs on the coins take on a deeper meaning. The bow, for example, was one of the sacred objects that Herakles was said to have given to his sons in a legend closely related to Scythian genealogies.

The sagaris also carried symbolic weight. Herodotus describes it in Scythian oath-taking rituals, and in their ethnogonic tale it appears among four golden objects that fell from the sky. With this in mind, it seems likely that the coin’s design deliberately referenced Scythian traditions, while also functioning as a civic emblem for the people of Olbia.

As argued in recent studies, this coinage—and a related issue showing Demeter wearing corona muralis and a Scythian archer—may have been created to commemorate the Scythian role in helping Olbia resist Zopyrion’s siege and the later defeat of his Macedonian troops.

Finally, the places where these coins are found tell an important part of the story. Although Olbian coins reached the Scythian hinterland earlier as well, finds show that this particular issue circulated on a massive scale. These coins likely played a major role in trade between Greeks and Scythians, possibly alongside the electrum coinage of Kyzikos, especially in the grain trade that linked the steppe and the Black Sea.

Further Reading
Anochin V.A. 1984. ”Borisfeny” i ich mesto v monetnoj sisteme Ol’vii, in: V.A. Anochin (ed.), Antičnaja kul’tura Severnogo Pričernomor’ja. Kiev, 3–36.
Karyškovskij P.O. 1968. Ol’vijskie “borisfeny”, Numizmatika i Sfragistika 3, 62–85.
Stolba V. F. 2007. The Numismatics of Chersonesos and Kerkinitis as Evidence of Greek and Barbarian Interrelations in Western Tauris, in: A. Bresson et al. (eds), Une koinè pontique. Cités grecques, sociétés indigènes et empires mondiaux sur le littoral nord de la mer Noire (VIIe s. a. C. – IIIe s. p. C.). Bordeaux, 85–97.
Stolba V. F. 2015. ‘Archers’ of the Blessed City: City’s Deliverance in the Coinage of Early-Hellenistic Olbia, Notae Numismaticae 10, 43–58.
Stolba V.F. 2019. Images with Meaning: Early Hellenistic Coin Typology of Olbia Pontike, in: V. Cojocaru et al. (eds), Advances in Ancient Black Sea Studies: Historiography, Archaeology and Religion. Cluj-Napoca, 523-541.



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