Greece P197 500 Drachmas 1968 FVF—Great Eleusinian Relief—Demeter—Knossos Goat

One of the most mythologically rich banknotes Greece ever produced — the Great Eleusinian Relief on the front, a Minoan wild goat carving from Knossos on the back, and the ghost of the Antikythera Ephebe in the watermark. Three masterpieces of ancient Greek art on a single note, issued under the Regime of the Colonels.

Front

• Color: Olive on multicolor
• Great Eleusinian Relief: The Great Eleusinian Relief at center — depicting Demeter, Triptolemos, and Persephone
• Watermark area: Blank area at left reserved for watermark
• Denomination: Value and date on multicolored guilloches at right
• Signatures: Dimitrios Galanis (Gov., Bank of Greece); Manager signature unknown
• Engraver: Lambros Orfanos

Back

• Color: Olive on multicolor
• Knossos goat: Ancient carving from Knossos depicting a wild goat and its kid at bottom left
• Fruits and printer's name: At bottom center
• Watermark area: Blank area at right
• Engraver: Georgios Angelopoulos

Other Characteristics

• Catalog numbers: P-197a; Numista N#205365
• Watermark: Head of the Antikythera Ephebe — a bronze statue of a youth recovered from an ancient shipwreck
• Composition: Paper
• Size: 158 × 74 mm
• Issuing entity: Bank of Greece (Τράπεζα της Ελλάδος)
• Printer: Banknote and Currency Printing Office (Ίδρυμα Εκτυπώσεως Τραπεζογραμματίων και Αξιών), Greece (1947–date)
• Demonetized: Yes
• Signatures: Dimitrios Galanis (Gov.); Manager unknown
• Currency: Third modern drachma (1954–2001)

The Great Eleusinian Relief: The Most Sacred Image in Ancient Greece

The central image on this note is not just any sculpture — it is the Great Eleusinian Relief, one of the most revered works of art in the ancient world, carved around 440–430 BC and now housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. It depicts three figures from the Eleusinian Mysteries: Demeter, goddess of the harvest, presenting a sheaf of wheat to the young prince Triptolemos, while Persephone crowns him with a wreath. The scene encodes the founding myth of agriculture itself — Demeter's gift of grain to humanity, transmitted through Triptolemos, who was sent across the world to teach mortals how to grow food. The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most important religious rites in ancient Greece, practiced for nearly 2,000 years at Eleusis, just west of Athens. Their content was so secret that initiates faced death for revealing them — and to this day, we still don't know exactly what happened inside. Putting this image on the 500-drachma note — the highest denomination in everyday circulation — was a statement of civilizational pride.

The Knossos Goat: Minoan Art from 3,500 Years Ago

The reverse features an ancient carving from Knossos, the great palace complex of the Minoan civilization on Crete, depicting a wild goat (agrimi) and its kid. The Minoans were Europe's first advanced civilization, flourishing from around 2700 to 1450 BC — centuries before classical Greece. Their art is remarkable for its naturalism, energy, and joy: dolphins leaping, bulls charging, goats nursing their young. The agrimi (Cretan wild goat, Capra aegagrus cretica) still roams the mountains of Crete today and remains a symbol of the island. By pairing a Minoan carving with the Eleusinian Relief, this note spans nearly 3,000 years of Greek artistic tradition on a single piece of paper.

About Greece

• Origin of name: "Greece" derives from Latin Graecia, the Roman name for the region; Greeks call their country Hellas (Ελλάς), from Hellen, the mythological ancestor of the Greek people
• Capital: Athens — city pop. ~664,000; metro pop. ~3.6 million
  • Origin of name: Named after the goddess Athena, patron deity of the city; the origin of Athena's own name remains debated — possibly pre-Greek
• Population: ~10.4 million (UN 2023) — similar to Michigan or Portugal
• Area: 131,957 km² (50,949 mi²) — similar to Alabama or England
• GDP per capita (PPP): ~$40,000 (IMF 2024)
• Main exports: Petroleum products, aluminum, pharmaceuticals, olive oil, cotton, tobacco, fruits
• Borders: Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria (north); Turkey (northeast); surrounded by Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas
• Official/spoken languages: Greek (official); minority languages include Turkish, Macedonian, Albanian
• Ethnicities: Greeks (~91%); Albanians, Bulgarians, Roma, and others
• Memberships: United Nations (founding member, 1945); NATO (1952); European Union (1981, first enlargement); Eurozone (2001, replacing the drachma)
• Sovereignty: Independence from the Ottoman Empire declared 1821; recognized 1830; modern republic established 1974 after the fall of the military junta

Greece Unfiltered

• Junta note: This note was issued in 1969 during the "Regime of the Colonels" — a military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974; the junta chose ancient religious imagery for its highest denomination while suppressing modern political freedoms
• Eleusinian Mysteries: The rites depicted on the front were practiced for nearly 2,000 years and their secrets were so well kept that we still don't know what initiates experienced inside the Telesterion at Eleusis
• Minoan mystery: The Minoan civilization — whose art appears on the reverse — collapsed suddenly around 1450 BC, possibly from the eruption of Thera (Santorini), one of the largest volcanic events in human history
• Debt crisis: Greece triggered the worst sovereign debt crisis in EU history (2010–2018), receiving three international bailouts totaling over €289 billion
• Shipping dominance: Greek shipowners control roughly 20% of global shipping tonnage — more than any other nation — despite Greece having only 0.13% of the world's population
• Antikythera mechanism: The watermark references the Antikythera Ephebe, a bronze statue of a youth from the same shipwreck that yielded the Antikythera mechanism — a 2,000-year-old analog computer that calculated astronomical positions

Own this note and hold 3,000 years of Greek civilization in your hands — Demeter's sacred gift on the front, a Minoan goat on the back, and a bronze youth in the watermark. The 500-drachma note is Greece's most mythologically dense banknote, and one of the most beautiful ever printed.