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COIN (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Look, Wiley, this is potentially more important than you think. We're not dealing with ancient sources but with modern academics' use of ancient sources. It would be extremely unusual for scholars to make this kind of mistake, if mistake it is, and that makes it a case of 'careful ignoral'.

But I will leave you to follow it up. I've got bigger fish to fry than elephants at the moment.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1399.html

The elephant trampling the snake is thought to be the first coin issued by Caesar, the issue was supposedly produced by a mint moving with his army. The reverse of this coin alludes to Caesar's position as Pontifex Maximus, while the obverse shows an elephant trampling a dragon or a snake, with the legend CAESAR in the exergue.

So get this: we are in the year 49 BC (whatever) of the famous crossing of the Rubicon, civil war is imminent. Caesar's first coin issue is a symbolic "elephant trampling a snake/serpent" well known warring animals, err, from Indian mythology.
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Wile E. Coyote


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It's a good area to trial your creative fuzzy thinking. And why not? Every Paradigm creates space for a reader's imagination.

The coin shows the victory of Caesar over the Germanic tribes.

It's age old good, over evil.

The elephant is Caesar, the serpent is Pompey.

The coin signifies the imminence of civil war.

In fact each answer is inventive and correct as each other. It's just that one reader sees an elephant in the Rubicon
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Mick Harper
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How can you tell it's Julius Caesar since all Roman Emperors were called 'Caesar' and, I think, were Pontifex Maximuses?
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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OK but under the Diocletian Reforms you had the Tetrarchy, a system of rule in which four men shared rule over the massive Roman Empire. The empire was effectively divided in two, with an Augustus and a subordinate Caesar in each half.
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Mick Harper
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I don't see what events four hundred years later have to do with Julius Caesar being on a coin. Unless I'm missing something. You will, I fear, have to take Ishmael's advice and spell it out.
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Wile E. Coyote


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How can you tell it's Julius Caesar since all Roman Emperors were called 'Caesar' and, I think, were Pontifex Maximuses?


I thought your point was that round about 68 AD the cognomen became a title.

Mick Harper wrote:
I don't see what events four hundred years later have to do with Julius Caesar being on a coin. Unless I'm missing something. You will, I fear, have to take Ishmael's advice and spell it out.


Under the Diocletian reforms a tetrachy was created with a subordinate "Caesar" and a ruling "Augustus" in East and West.

The Caesar was the anticipated suc[cessor] to the Augustus.
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Mick Harper
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Yeah, I knew that. I kinda need to know what you're driving at. Sort of, you know, precisely.
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Wile E. Coyote


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http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/sear5/s1399.html

Don't know, look at the trunk and the serpent. Successor?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Let's take a sideways look.
wiki wrote:
Execution by elephant was a common method of capital punishment in South and Southeast Asia, particularly in India, where Asian elephants were used to crush, dismember, or torture captives in public executions. The animals were trained and versatile, able to kill victims immediately or to torture them slowly over a prolonged period. Most commonly employed by royalty, the elephants were used to signify both the ruler's absolute power and his ability to control wild animals.

The sight of elephants executing captives both horrified and attracted the interest of European travelers, and was recorded in numerous contemporary journals and accounts of life in Asia. The practice was eventually suppressed by the European empires that colonised the region in the 18th and 19th centuries. While primarily confined to Asia, the practice was occasionally adopted by Western powers, such as Ancient Rome and Carthage, particularly to deal with mutinous soldiers.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_by_elephant#/media/File:Le_Toru_Du_MOnde.jpg
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Wile E. Coyote


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Lets take a forward look.

Year of the Elephant

wiki wrote:
The ʿĀmu l-Fīl (Arabic: عام الفيل‎, Year of the Elephant) is the name in Islamic history for the year approximately equating to 570 CE. According to Islamic tradition, it was in this year that Muhammad (Arabic: مُـحَـمَّـد‎, consonant letters: m-ħ-m-d) was born.[1] The name is derived from an event said to have occurred at Mecca: Abraha, the Abyssinian, Christian ruler of Yemen, which was subject to the Kingdom of Aksum of Ethiopia,[2][3] marched upon the Ka‘bah in Mecca with a large army, which included one or more war elephants, intending to demolish it. However, the lead elephant, known as 'Mahmud' (Arabic: مَـحْـمُـوْد‎, consonant letters: ħ-m-d),[4] is said to have stopped at the boundary around Mecca, and refused to enter. It has been theorized that an epidemic such as by smallpox could have caused such a failed invasion of Mecca.


A large army approaches with war elephants but mysteriously holds back. (the history sounds familiar).

Why?

The answer is not smallpox.
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Hatty
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According to al-islam.org, the elephants of Abraha changed the way the calendar was reckoned (for a time) rather than the birth of the Prophet

There were many elephants in his army; he himself rode a huge elephant. It was an animal which the Arabs had not seen before, thus the year came to be known as 'Amul-Fil (the year of the elephant), and it started an era for reckoning the years in Arabia. This remained in use until the days of 'Umar ibn al ­Khattab when, on the advice of Hazrat 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, he replaced it with the era of Hijra.

The story is taken from five verses, called Sura 105, in the Koran apparently written in Mecca.

Elsewhere there is no mention of the battle nor of elephants. Oddly, Abraha was supposed to have defeated all the Arabs he fought but before Mohammed was allegedly born.
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Hatty
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While we're about it, have you come across the elephant carvings of the Great Temple of Petra? They were discovered in 1921.

Petra is supposedly a very ancient shrine yet established 'relatively late', probably 150 BC.

Christianity found its way to Petra in the 4th century AD, nearly 500 years after the establishment of Petra as a trade centre. Athanasius mentions a bishop of Petra (Anhioch. 10) named Asterius. At least one of the tombs (the "tomb with the urn"?) was used as a church. An inscription in red paint records its consecration "in the time of the most holy bishop Jason".

After the Islamic conquest of 629–632 Christianity in Petra, as of most of Arabia, gave way to Islam. During the First Crusade Petra was occupied by Baldwin I of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and formed the second fief of the barony of Al Karak (in the lordship of Oultrejordain) with the title Château de la Valée de Moyse or Sela. It remained in the hands of the Franks until 1189.

The city seems to have disappeared from all records after 750 AD, until its rediscovery in 1812.

Johann Burckhardt, a Swiss silk merchant, made some truly historical finds, discovering first Hittite/Luwian hieroglyphs and then Petra.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Hatty wrote:
According to al-islam.org, the elephants of Abraha changed the way the calendar was reckoned (for a time) rather than the birth of the Prophet


You are right, all of this relates to calendars, circular time, serpents and elephant trunks.
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Hatty
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Someone commenting on the Petra elephants mentioned the trunks were too long. The reason cannot be artistic but no-one apart from Wiley cares to give any explanation.
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