2022 - Niue 2 NZD Silver Coin Mythical Creatures - Minotaur - Proof

Mythical Creatures

The Czech Mint dedicated the ninth silver coin from the Mythical Creatures collector's series to the Minotaur.

The tale of the Minotaur, featuring the legendary characters of King Minos, the builder Daedalus, Prince Theseus and Princess Ariadne, is one of the most famous ancient stories. But the tale of a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull trapped in a complex labyrinth offers much more than just thrilling entertainment. It introduces us to the ancient Minoan civilisation of Crete - the oldest known European civilisation, which significantly influenced the culture of Greece, together with the culture of the whole of Western Europe. For the Minoans, whose history began 7,000 BC, the bull was a sacred animal - the personification of a religious cult of strength and fertility. Clay statues of bulls, bull heads made of gold and murals of daredevils jumping over bulls have survived in Crete to this day. Therefore, Minotaur was probably a god in human form, and the role of the man-eating monster was not attributed to him until Homer...

The medal maker Asamat Baltaev, DiS., placed the angry Minotaur on the reverse side of the coin and supplemented it with the English inscription MINOTAURUS. It is not without interest that the mintage does not have a classic coin frame – instead of that, the relief is surrounded by decorative Hellenistic ornaments that permeate the entire collector´s cycle. As the coins of the Czech Mint are issued with a foreign license from the island of Niue, their obverse side bears the portrait and name of Queen Elizabeth II, the nominal value of 2 DOLLARS (NZD) and the year of issue 2022.