| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
 |
|
| Folks are coinquered through trade, not conquered in battles. |
Folks don't want to hear that Alexander the Great didn't conquer the known world, or that these battles are made up.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
Women don't feature on ancient coins so the appearance of a coin with Charlemagne's queen engraved on the reverse in 2022 has caused great excitement among early medievalists
A Carolingian coin has recently been acquired by the Centre Charlemagne in Aachen which represents an entirely unexpected and truly historic addition toour knowledge of the reign of Charlemagne, as it bears the name of his wife Fastrada. It is the first known example of a queen being named on aCarolingian coin, and because the coin type was only introduced in 793 and Fastrada died in August 794, it can be very precisely dated.
Charles was almost certainly prompted to strike it by learning of pennies of Cynethryth minted by Offa in the late 780s. The coinage reflects both the affection in which Charlemagne held Fastrada and the power he was prepared to share with her. |
The dating was determined by Fastrada's death date but there's no mention of her name being on Charlemagne's new reformed coin (novi denarii) in the 9th century manuscript, Codex Sangallensis 731, by an otherwise obscure scribe called Wandalgarius who drew the coin around mid-October 793.
| What makes this particularly remarkable is that during the first half of his reign Charlemagne took decisive measures to remove from his coinage the name of anyone else but himself. |
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/emed.12640
Provenance of this 'totally unexpected coin' is unknown so I asked Simon Coupland, the author of the Wiley article, how he authenticated it. He replied
| Authenticity is based on careful examination of the forms of the inscriptions and the close parallels to other genuine contemporary coins. |
Analysing forms of inscriptions isn't exactly scientific but anyway, as we know, forgers examine inscriptions just as carefully as numismatists, if not more so. How 'close parallels' can help with authentification if this coin is 'a previously unknown type' isn't clear.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
"It's no use, the market's really flat. Let's go into stamps."
"That's worse, if anything, from what I hear. Come on, let's go for a biggie."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, first something or other."
"Like what?"
"Dunno... first ship... first horse... I know, first non-royal."
"First woman."
"First woman it is."
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
I was wrong about women not being depicted on coins. The first royal wife on a coin was Cynethryth, wife of Offa. It's a silver penny this time, also without provenance, merely "Found near Cambridge in 1992".
| Cynethryth, the wife of King Offa of Mercia, was the first and only Anglo-Saxon queen to have her name and image placed on coins. While it has been suggested that these coins were inspired by the appearance of the empress Irene on Byzantine issues, the profile portrait harks back to coinage of Roman augustae. Many details of Cynethryth’s life, such as the date of her marriage, are unknown. She appears to have been active in political affairs until Offa’s death. After her husband’s passing, she became abbess of the monastery of Cookham, where she remained until her death sometime after 798. Cynethryth appears in the hagiography of St. Aethelbert, where she is portrayed as a jealous villain who incites Offa to kill the saint. |
Needless to say, no archaeology survives of the 8th century monastery though archaeologists digging in Cookham have uncovered artefacts dating back to the Roman period, hardly surprising as Sashes Island, a crossing point of the Thames, is near Cookham.
The Romans got there first anyway
| Cynethryth’s portrait on Mercian coinage, particularly the profile view and classicizing dress, hearkens back to coins minted for late Roman imperial women, especially those of Constantine’s mother, Helena. As Pauline Stafford notes, these visual cues that link Cynethryth to Helena underscore how the Mercian queen’s ruling authority relied on her identity as a mother. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
So it could be said that physical evidence for the existence of Anglo-Saxon queens is only thirty years old. And in Cambridge too, not normally considered part of Mercia. If I was given a coin with a woman on ("You don't see that every day of the week") and it's a foreign queen ("You don't see her round here very often") I'd probably chuck it away in a field too, silver or no silver.
A lot of Anglo-Saxon history seems to rest on Offa. Good at dykes but not so hot when it comes to choosing wives. Fancy being jealous of a faraway king of East Anglia. Where Cambridge is... it's beginning to hang together. A contract killing.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
The Winfarthing pendant-cum-brooch is being discussed on Facebook by the Time Team group
| The Winfarthing pendant, featured in the new time team episodes, is a seventh century Anglo-Saxon disc brooch that was found in an undisturbed grave in 2014 near Diss, Norfolk. by detectorist Tom Lucking. |
According to the museum's report, the pendant was found 'nearby', viz:"we acquired the complete contents of the excavated grave and one find from nearby, which was a small gold and garnet seventh century pendant."
There is no reference to any carbon dating tests carried out on the skeleton which seems to be the only accurate dating method available. Alternatively, if it didn't come from the burial site, how would Norfolk Museum go about dating a gold-and-garnet object in the absence of archaeological and/or stratigraphical context?
Fortunately, two pendants from the treasure are made of coins which historians agree "were rarely turned into pendants after c. 630" so the burial and related grave goods were declared to be seventh century based on the presence of these 'Merovingian' coins and the fact that the pendants were 'rather worn' so could be judged to be pretty old
| The coins have been identified as being Merovingian, minted near Marseilles during the reign of the French king Sigebert, c. AD 630 – 656. The coins help to date the grave post quem, to the mid 7th century period of religious change and conversion. Coins were rarely turned into pendants after c. 630, and it is likely the inhumation must be dated to this early period |
Apparently this particular King of the Franks wasn't considered worth recording by his contemporaries, the earliest written mention of Sigebert I being an 11th century, though unprovenanced, manuscript copy of Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks.
| the coin pendants seem rather worn. This indicates a mid to late 7th-century date, which brings it close to the final period in which furnished inhumations took place. |
It sounds like there are still more not-yet radiocarbon dated burials and still more research needed
| A more detailed study of the finds, as well as the poorly preserved skeleton, awaits publication as does further excavations at Winfarthing. |
https://www.medieval.eu/anglo-saxon-treasure-winfarthing/
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
|
If nine years has not sufficed, what's your estimate?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
The Winfarthing treasure trove has been likened to the Sutton Hoo site where Merovingian coins were also found and used for dating purposes. Unlike Winfarthing though, there isn't any scope at Sutton Hoo for scientific dating, with organic matter having been dissolved in the acidic soil.so it's a nuisance if numismatists' conclusions don't tally with historians' views
| Dr Gordon Ward's summary of the evidence of the coins and of the views of numismatists regarding the date of Sutton Hoo calls for some comment. Its object is apparently that of demonstrating that, as he himself puts it, "the numismatists have been set a task for which they are not equipped". The archaeologists, he suggests, must be left to settle the date between themselves, and the numismatic 'evidence' can simply be ignored. If this 'evidence' runs counter to his belief that the burial commemorates King Redwald, so much the worse for the 'evidence'. It is too uncertain and imprecise to be of much use anyway. |
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/abs/dating-of-the-sutton-hoo-coins/41DE014C95E8E8348617661A035AB14C
Dr Ward was a philatelist not a numismatist
| Dr. Gordon Reginald Ward (23 February 1885 – 10 July 1962) was a British philatelist who signed the Roll of Distinguished Philatelists in 1953 |
and a respected authority on local history
| Gordon Ward (1885-1962) was a doctor of medicine who lived for many years in Sevenoaks. He was a member of The Kent Archaeological Society from 1927 and contributed several articles to Archaeologia Cantiana. He collected documents and books relating to the history of Kent and deposited transcripts and original archives, as well as photographs of, and notes on, AngloSaxon charters, with the Kent Archives Office. The Kent Archaeological Society holds a large collection of his papers and his research notebooks are at Sevenoaks Library. |
Historians seem quite defensive about how they arrived at the dates of 620-25 (though other dates have been proposed). The 'evidence' for King Raedwald, details of whose life are unavailable, is Bede still regarded as a reliable, or, rather, the sole, source for the seventh century.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
| Hatty wrote: | | I was wrong about women not being depicted on coins. The first royal wife on a coin was Cynethryth, wife of Offa. It's a silver penny this time, also without provenance, merely "Found near Cambridge in 1992". |
Not sure the portrait of Cynetryth looks quite like "Offa" to Wiley maybe the Coin is telling us that Offa has a queen. Rather than it being a portrait of the Queen?
Cyne = Queen.
Queen Troth ?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
|
|
|
|
| Wile E. Coyote wrote: | Helena apparently dies in 328 AD whatever, and her remains are placed in a "mausoleum" which had originally, so we are told, been designed to house the remains of Constantine.
| After the death of Helena, Ad Duas Lauros was assigned to the Roman popes. The mausoleum was damaged by the use of its materials for other constructions. In the 8th century it became a defensive fortress. However, it continued to house Helena's tomb until the 11th century, when the sarcophagus was brought to the Lateran (currently it is in the Vatican Museum). |
So Helena was moved in the 11th century....... |
'Purpura' posted some pictures on Twitter/X of purple sarcophagi from the Church of the Holy Apostles founded by Constantine in Constantinople in the fourth century and still housing mortal remains of emperors/empresses 700 years later. There's precious little to show due to the Crusaders' sacking and looting in 1204 so I wondered if there are any contemporary records of when the sarcophagi were constructed. There are no mentions in the fifteenth century, unsurprisingly as the church had vanished, replaced by the Haga Sophia in 1461 but it appears the porphyry quarrying had ceased back in the dark ages
| Porphyry was not a common occurrence it was a rare, expensive, and prized asset. Early on there was more, after the 7th century no more was quarried. Those are certainly imperial sarcophagi, attributing them with certainty to any particular emperor is pretty impossible though |
Holy Roman Emperors Frederick II (d. 1250), Henry IV (d. 1106) and William I (d. 1166), and Empress Constance (d. 1198), all have porphyry sarcophagi. If porphyry was not being quarried, one wonders how it was obtained. Were spare sarcophagi hanging around for five centuries or might some have been recycled?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
What's the connection?
| Porphyria occurs when the body cannot convert compounds called 'porphyrins' into heme. Porphyria can affect the skin, nervous system, gastrointestinal system or all of these, depending on the specific type. Currently, there is no cure, but medical treatment and lifestyle changes can usually manage the symptoms. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I have been asked my opinion about this https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/iron-age-treasure-wales-0019092 From an AE viewpoint this is halfway between an individual find (dubious) and a hoard (non-dubious). My doubts stem from this
| Furthermore, every coin featured mystical and intricate designs and materials, providing insights into trade and societal values during the Iron Age in Britain. |
Surely coins are meant to be uniform, even a bit on the dull side. But don't let me influence your magisterial judgement.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I have been asked for my verdict, fake or find, about this Wiki entry
| Esunertos, or Iisuniirtos (fl. 50-30 BC), was a male ruler in Britain in the western Thames basin in the second half of the 1st century BC. He is known only from a few rare gold and silver coins, which provide an alternate spelling of his name – IISVNIIRTOS. |
I suppose the Ancient Brits only having gold and silver coins is not a red flag.
| The name Esunertos has no parallel in contemporary histories for Britain, but is a recorded masculine name from the Roman period of occupation in Gaul. |
"What name shall we use?" "Maybe not too famous." "They're aren't any others." "Choose one from Gaul, we were all the same, right?"
| The name has been interpreted as 'mighty as Esos', a contemporary Celtic god. It is not clear whether Esunertos was a friend or even usurper of Commius (or Commios). Nevertheless, alongside Commios, his is the earliest attested name on a British-made Iron Age coin. |
It's a world record!
| Stylistically, the coinage is similar to Commios, ruler of the Atrebates. After Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain in 55 and 54 BC, he was made a client king at Silchester. Commios is known to have struck coins in his own name from 30 BC. The three known coins of Esunertos centre around Danebury Hill Fort, placing his territory around this prehistoric site towards the end of the Iron Age period. |
"Look in the catalogue."
| In March 2023, Lewis Fudge, a metal detectorist unearthed a gold quarter stater coin in a field in the Test Valley of Hampshire. It was reported to numismatic experts at the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Celtic Coin Index at the Ashmolean Museum. The reading was confirmed as [IIS]VNIRTOS, providing a new inscription in the British numismatic record. Prior to the Test Valley discovery, other coins had been incorrectly identified as unsigned issues of the Belgae tribe. |
They fudged it.
| In September 2023, Spink confirmed that a coin of Esunertos would be sold at auction. On 28 September 2023, Spink announced that this same coin had sold for £20,400 (including Buyer's Premium), setting a record for any Quarter-Stater ever sold at auction. |
It's another world record. Nice work if you can get it.
Footnotes
The theophoric name is also attested in Continental Europe, interpreted to mean 'having the power of Esus'. |
Theophonically, Jesus.
References
Wills, Sophie. "Coin depicting undiscovered Iron Age ruler set to fetch thousands at auction after being discovered in a field". Yorkshire Evening Post. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
"A NEW IRON AGE "KING" | Iron Age Britain, Belgae, "Esunertos" (c. 50-30 BC), AV Quarter-Stater". Spink & Son. Retrieved 2023-09-29.
L. Markey, Thomas; Egetmeyer, Markus; Muller, Jean-Claude (2013). "The boar's tusk of Istres (Bouches-du-Rhône): a Lepontic talismanic inscription". Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie. 60 (1): 129 (entry nr. 13). doi:10.1515/zcph.2013.008.
"Coin offered at Spink reveals a new mighty Iron Age ruler | Antiques Trade Gazette". www.antiquestradegazette.com. Retrieved 2023-09-18.
De Jersey, Philip (2001). Celtic coinage in Britain. Shire archaeology. Princes Risborough: Shire Publications. ISBN 978-0-7478-0325-6.
Bean, Simon C. (1994). The Coinage of the Atrebates and Regni (PhD thesis). University of Nottingham. pp. 238–247.
"Name of Unknown Iron Age Ruler Discovered on 2000-Year-old Coin Found in English Field". Good News Network. 2023-09-10. Retrieved 2023-09-12.
Leffman, Jim (18 October 2023). "A new king has been added to Britain's history books". The Independent. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
The British Museum (10 February 2015). "Record ID: HAMP-9E612E - IRON AGE coin". The Portable Antiquities Scheme. Retrieved 2023-09-12. |
Our old mate, Philip de Jersey, is in there. And the Antiques Trade Gazette. And the British Museum.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | I have been asked my opinion about this https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/iron-age-treasure-wales-0019092 From an AE viewpoint this is halfway between an individual find (dubious) and a hoard (non-dubious). My doubts stem from this
| Furthermore, every coin featured mystical and intricate designs and materials, providing insights into trade and societal values during the Iron Age in Britain. |
Surely coins are meant to be uniform, even a bit on the dull side. But don't let me influence your magisterial judgement. |
You have to keep in mind that according to ortho Greek coins are not found much in these isles as the Greeks never invaded. A lot of history, archaeology and numismatics was built on invasion theory.
So this bit below is worth highlighting....
| The statement added that this type of coin was very popular in ancient Greece. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | I have been asked for my verdict, fake or find, about this Wiki entry
| Esunertos, or Iisuniirtos (fl. 50-30 BC), was a male ruler in Britain in the western Thames basin in the second half of the 1st century BC. He is known only from a few rare gold and silver coins, which provide an alternate spelling of his name – IISVNIIRTOS. |
|
It's a Caesar coin.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
