Terracotta jar

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Found with thirty gold staters inside. Thirty gold staters, each stamped with the confronted foreparts of a lion and a bull, were found in this small jug. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Lydians invented coinage and that Kroisos, who reigned from about 560 to 546 B.C., was the first king to issue both gold and silver coins. This jug was probably buried for safekeeping shortly before the Persian conquest of Sardis in 547 B.C

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art