Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) · other

Coin Portraying Queen Cleopatra I as the Goddess Isis

Source of record: Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

The front of this coin depicts the queen Cleopatra I as the goddess Isis. On the back, an eagle is shown standing on a thunder bolt.

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.

Bronze coin with a small central portrait-like head on the obverse and a larger stylized figure/floral or symbolic form on the reverse.

The image shows a bronze coin photographed on a neutral background, with two views (left obverse, right reverse). On the left face, a worn relief depicts a human head in profile with darkened eye area; surrounding details are indistinct due to corrosion and abrasion. Below and around the head are faint curved and clustered marks that could be decorative elements, possibly related to divine iconography, but no specific hieroglyphs can be read with confidence. On the right face, a larger worn relief shows a figure or emblem that appears broadly like a standing/divine form or radiating/fan-like elements, again too abraded to confirm exact motifs. No legible Greek, Coptic, or Arabic text is visible. Any Egyptian hieroglyphic marks are present only as unclear, non-readable surface texture; no cartouche or clearly readable royal name is identifiable. The overall condition is poor due to heavy wear and pitting, limiting secure identification of deities/names.

royal Hellenistic / Ptolemaic (Cleopatra I era); exact date unclear from image alone. poor
Deities Isis (attributed by catalogue; not directly verifiable from the worn iconography in image)
Materials bronze

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1

English description

Reverse: [ΠΤΟΑΕΜΑΙΟΥ ΒΑΣΙ] ΑΕΩΕ

Connections

Deities Isis

Cross-references (1)

  • ARTIC-id 9879 tier-2
About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian).
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.