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Minerva

DB03-0423
DB03-0423DB03-0423
ID Number: DB03-0423 Description: 100 Lire Country or State: Italy Year: 1991 Currency: Lira Obverse: Female head with laurel wreath facing left, dividing the country name on both sides. Names of the designer and engraver below Obverse Legend: REPVBBLICA IT ...Read more



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ID Number: DB03-0423
Description: 100 Lire
Country or State: Italy
Year: 1991
Currency: Lira
Obverse: Female head with laurel wreath facing left, dividing the country name on both sides. Names of the designer and engraver below
Obverse Legend: REPVBBLICA ITALIANA, ROMAGNOLI, GIAMPAOLI INC.
Reverse: Goddess Minerva facing left reaching an olive tree with her raised right hand while in the left holds a long spear. Value at left of olive trunk; mintmark at right of the Goddess. Date below, in exergue
Reverse Legend: L.100, 1991, R
Designer: Giuseppe Romagnoli
Engraver: Pietro Giampaoli
Edge: Reeded
Orientation: Coin alignment ↑↓
Note: Small Type
Mint Mark: R (Rome)
Composition: Acmonital (Ac)
Diameter: 18.3 mm
Thickness: 1.86 mm
Weight: 3.300 grams
Mintage: 100,000,000
Catalog Number: KM# 96.2; Gigante: 291

Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom and strategic warfare, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. Minerva is not a patron of violence such as Mars, but of defensive war only. From the second century BC onward, the Romans equated her with the Greek goddess Athena. Minerva is one of the three Roman deities in the Capitoline Triad, along with Jupiter and Juno.

She was the virgin goddess of music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, and the crafts. She is often depicted with her sacred creature, an owl usually named as the "owl of Minerva", which symbolised her association with wisdom and knowledge as well as, less frequently, the snake and the olive tree. Minerva is commonly depicted as tall with an athletic and muscular build, as well as wearing armour and carrying a spear. As the most important Roman goddess, she is highly revered, honored, and respected. Marcus Terentius Varro considered her to be ideas and the plan for the universe personified.