Handmade - Sterling Silver (925) - 10.3 gr - 2.5cm diameter
Collection: Georgian kings
Made in Georgia
Obverse: Signature of Queen Tamar - a replica of a coin minted in 1187 during the reign of Queen Tamar.
Reverse: Bagrationi coat of arms as depicted on a coin struck during the reign of Erekle II in 1765.
No Georgian monarch has been eulogized, by poets or by chroniclers, in and after her lifetime, as was Tamar. She became a mythical figure, especially among the highlanders who placed her in their pantheon as a god of fertility and of seasons. Canonized by the Orthodox Church, she was 'the fourth member of the Trinity' to the contemporary copyists of the Gospels. Her monument is 'Rustaveli's The Man in the Panther's Skin', where heroines are as decisive and principled as heroes, and where the culture of chivalry is no longer national but operated by merging Platonism, Christianity and pragmatism into a new code of values.
Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires - A history of Georgia