The Phrygian cap (/ˈfrɪdʒ(iː)ən/ FRIJ-(ee)-ən) or liberty cap is a soft conical cap with the apex bent over, associated in antiquity with several peoples in Eastern Europe, Anatolia and Asia, including the Persians, the Medes and the Scythians, as well as in the Balkans, Dacia, Thrace and in Phrygia, where the name originated. The oldest depiction of the Phrygian cap is from Persepolis in Iran.
Although Phrygian caps did not originally function as liberty caps, they came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty first in the American Revolution and then in the French Revolution, particularly as a symbol of jacobinism (in which context it has been also called a jacobin cap). The original cap of liberty was the Roman pileus, the felt cap of emancipated slaves of ancient Rome, which was an attribute of Libertas, the Roman goddess of liberty. In the 16th century, the Roman iconography of liberty was revived in emblem books and numismatic handbooks where the figure of Libertas is usually depicted with a pileus. The most extensive use of headgear as a symbol of freedom in the first two centuries after the revival of the Roman iconography was made in the Netherlands, where the cap of liberty was adopted in the form of a contemporary hat. In the 18th century, the traditional liberty cap was widely used in English prints, and from 1789 also in French prints; by the early 1790s, it was regularly used in the Phrygian form.
Issuer Colombia
Period Republic of New Granada (1831-1858)
Type Standard circulation coin
Years 1847-1848
Value 1 Décimo de Real (0.01 COP)
Currency Peso decimalized (1847-date)
Composition Copper
Weight 9.2 g
Diameter 28 mm
Shape Round
Technique Milled