2023 Cook Islands Ancient Greece Honey Bee Ephesos 1/2g Gold Coin

Ancient cities chose symbols for their coinage that represented the founding mythology, a pun on the city’s name, a characteristic feature of the economy or the city’s devotion to a particular deity. Ephesos, a Greek city on the west coast of present-day Turkey, used to be an important center of worship for the Greek goddess Artemis. The motifs on the city’s coins, such as the bee, reflect this fact very clearly. Allegedly, the association between the bee and the goddess was so strong that the priestesses of Artemis were called “honey bees”.