Phanagor's ‘portrait'

A fragment of volumetric oenochoe with a stamp showing a rather realistically depicted male head in profile wearing a pilos with two surviving letters over the head (|O|AN|A|) was found in Patrei in 2017. The find made it possible not only to identify this image as an obverse emblem of Phanagoria coins dating to the period when the city was autonomous (Zakharov, 2018; Kovalchuk, 2019) but also establish that the man on the coin wears a metallic helmet of a pilos type rather than a felt hat as was previously thought. This observation provided an opportunity to get back to an earlier discussion as to who is represented on the obverse of the Phanagoria coins: Phanagor, the founder of the polis or the Kabiroi, chthonic gods. The author of the paper agrees with the conclusions made by D. Braund (Braund, 2011) who clearly demonstrated that we cannot say that pilos can be used as an attributive feature or that the Kabiroi cult was spread across the North Pontic region. It can be inferred from the assessment of the historical context of coin mintage by Phanagoria and the new epigraphic evidence confirming a heroic cult of the oikistes Phanagor that the coins and the stamp from Patrei feature the person who gave his name to the city and who is represented as a hero.