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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
To add to the confusion we use to conflate Saxons with salt (cf Saxa Salt, still the leading brand). But I'm going with you. For now.


Salt Wicks (vics) are manufactured marshes to provide salt for export.
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Mick Harper
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On the other hand Saxony is where the salt mines are. The question comes down to economics -- is it cheaper to bring that up the Elbe (via what historians claim is New Saxony, i.e. Hamburg) or to bring it up from western France where the hotter weather and artificial lagoons make evaporative salt way cheaper than Britmarsh salt (unless 'security of supply' is bothering them). Even further north (Saltburn and Prestonpans) they just boil seawater. The big market though is round the Baltic where they don't have either hot weather or a saline sea.

It's interesting that the next big push centred on pepper. It's salt'n'pepper history. Yet today neither condiment is worth a brass farthing. [Except apparently salt batteries are going to be our saviour.]
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Wile E. Coyote


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Here is an overview of Republican Coinage

Coin: Obverse: Reverse

As: Janus: Prow of Galley

Semis: Jupiter: Prow of Galley

Triens: Minerva: Prow of Galley

Quadrans: Hercules: Prow Of Galley

Sextans: Mercury: Prow of Galley

Uncia: Roma: Prow of Galley


The Greek god Hermes (the Roman Mercury ) was the god of translators and interpreters. He was a messenger for all the other gods. He ruled over wealth, good fortune, commerce, fertility, and thievery. He was also a trickster. Think of Mercury = merchant and mercantile.

Sextans are the Mercury/Hermes coin.
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Mick Harper
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Hermes (the Roman Mercury ) was the god of translators and interpreters.

This I didn't know. It chimes in with Phoenician being an international phonetic system used for trade between people who couldn't otherwise understand one another. Hermits would find it helpful too in their role of speaking sign posts.

I have no idea what your coin talk is all about. You're catching the Ishmaelian disease. ["Well, I wish he would infect my other generals etc"]
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Wile E. Coyote


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THe coins have different "heads", Janus, Jupiter, Minerva and so on. When you look at later Anglo Saxon coins the "Head" appears similar to that on these coins.

The tails feature the prow of a galley, Wiley takes this as signifing trade.

There are different denominations

As = tenth of a drachma

Semi= Half an as

Triens = Third of an as

Quadrans= Quarter of an as

Sexton= Sixth of an as

Uncia= twelth (In old imperial think of 12 inches in a foot or 12 pennies in a shilling )

We are interested for now in the Six coin, Sector coin, Saxon Hermes coin.....because the heads on Saxon Coins "look like" Roman Republican/Greek coins.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The Greek god Hermes (the Roman Mercury ) was the god of translators and interpreters. He was a messenger for all the other gods. He ruled over wealth, good fortune, commerce, fertility, and thievery. He was also a trickster. Think of Mercury = merchant and mercantile.


As we replace sectors, we see that the Thames entrepôt stretches inland and goes through what are thought of as Anglo Saxon Kingdoms, we hope, and are given by our ortho mythos, six/sax, a heptarthy six. That is the same number of our coin denominations (hey!).

For 300 years (between 600 and 900), known as Mercian Supremacy or the "Golden Age of Mercia", having annexed or gained submissions from five of the other six kingdoms of the Heptarchy (East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex)


Wiley has already explained Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex.

Let's take a look at the Kingdom of Mercia, and Offa the Wolf who issued those pennies.

Wiki does hold out much hope..... according to Wiki, Mercia is marsh land, or border land.

Merce, meaning "borderland" (from which the Modern English word march also comes), the kingdom was rendered as Mierce or Myrce in the West Saxon dialect.


No, can't use that, and isn't it, just asking, a tad bonkers.... I mean??

For Wiley Mercia is the Mercury/Hermes area of Merchants, it is centred around the Trent and its tributaries. You paid a triens tribute to move along the river Trent. You certainly wouldn't sail along in the Trent in a trireme, unless you were an experimental archaeologist, as that would be to confuse ancient boat design with coin design, and the number of banks of ores actually represent the denomination of the coin (!), not a fabled super warship. Don't forget, on the back of early Republic coins are the prow of a trading ship.......
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Mick Harper
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This is as exhilarating as it is incomprehensible. Give us some avenues to explore!
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Mick Harper
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Conicidentally, a Norwegian correspondent told me about this today https://www.routledge.com/Coins-in-Churches-Archaeology-Money-and-Religious-Devotion-in-Medieval/Gullbekk-Kilger-Kristensen-Roland/p/book/9780367557072. Two quotes from the blurb that caught my eye

which opens up a new field of research on religion and money for an international audience.

They're talking about my mate Wiley, I decided.

Based on 100,000 single finds of coins from the 11th to 18th centuries

as per the Rev Hist formulation
coins from hoards are dull but authentic
single finds are exciting but dubious

though these are from churches which might make a difference.
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Wile E. Coyote


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For hundreds of years numismatists have thought that many of the images seen on Saxon and Celtic coins were inspired by Roman and Greek prototypes. A lot of ink has been expended on whether there was an original founding Phillip of Macedon coin. It's an integral part of this oft unstated (?) science, you have to point out the sources of inspiration, which generates common visual types, which are then classified.

It's really based on a dialogue.

Aethelbeard "Cracking news, we have routed the Mercians"
Court Advisor " That is great news indeed, Aethelbeard"
Aethelbeard "Time for a new coin to celebrate my triumph"
Court Advisor " How about something Roman"
Aethelbeard "I was thinking that we might try for someting a bit more local or maybe even a Jesus"
Court Advisor "What an excellent idea" "I can remember your Uncle, Aethelbald The One Testicle, had a similar idea, shortly before he was stabbed in the groin"
Aethelbeard "On second thoughts I will go for a mock Heracles look with a chariot ".......
Court Advisor " An excellent choice"
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Mick Harper
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So they would get their artistic inspiration from statues, friezes and that sort of thing rather than from coins? As per Rev Hist's mordant comment

Coins are second only to pottery for establishing the age of historical and archaeological finds, but historians and archaeologists are not trained in numismatics as a matter of course. This is more to do with class than classroom. Anything the masses go in for, scholars regard as infra dig. The masses do not go infra Classics so it is lucky that many Dark Age coins are copies of Classical designs. Academics have yet to identify the precise mechanism whereby coins can survive for hundreds of years in order to be copied so it may be that coin-collecting was as popular in the Dark Age as it is today.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Within the history of the science of numismatics, my limited understanding is that the early pioneers looked for the ancients, getting inspiration from coins, but later on they started considering other typical images.

You look for the original, with a clear message.

Was Aethelbeard trying to convey the same message?

Was he trying to convey the same message but adding a local twist, ie is he implying his victory over the Mercians, now symbolised by Heracles riding a chariot drawn by four horses, was that he was actually cleverly signalling that he was now master of four kingdoms.

Maybe Aethelbeard just liked the classical image? But I doubt this will earn a pass at your University. You have to come forward with something that demonstrates a clever use of sources. So bringing in friezes, tapestries and sculptures with a mention of the Franks Casket is the way to go.
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Hatty
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
The Greek god Hermes (the Roman Mercury ) was the god of translators and interpreters. He was a messenger for all the other gods. He ruled over wealth, good fortune, commerce, fertility, and thievery. He was also a trickster. Think of Mercury = merchant and mercantile.

The Hermes connection to tricksters and spies seems to have continued, coincidentally or not, with St Ermin's Hotel, a nineteenth-century mansion block converted to a hotel in 1896 and famous as a meeting place for politicians and spies due, apparently, to the hotel being so close to the Houses of Parliament. The headquarters of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War was just around the corner at 54 Broadway.

The hotel is accessed by a small side street called St Ermin's Hill at the junction of Tothill Street, Broadway/Petty France. St Ermin's Hill (or Hermit's Hill) was presumably named for St Ermin's Chapel, demolished in the sixteenth century, or maybe vice versa. 'Tot' names are often associated with high(ish) places and Toothill is thought to have been a beacon hill. A nineteenth century engraver, illustrator and antiquary called Wykeham Archer suggested Toothill was 'Thoth-hill' and that Thoth was a version of Mercury i.e. Hermes. Another antiquary, John Aubrey, recorded that Tothill Fields had a maze (or Troy-town) in the seventeenth century.
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Mick Harper
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I once worked at the St Ermin's as a porter! I carried Selwyn Lloyd's bag one night -- he lived in a permanent suite at the top of the hotel but other than that I had no connection with any of the larger intelligence agencies. But I have to admit: good spot, Hatty.
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Hatty
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Hatty wrote:
Wiki says

In Lebor Ogaim ("The Book of Ogams"), also known as the Ogam Tract, is an Old Irish treatise on the ogham alphabet. It is preserved in R.I.A. MS 23 P 12 308–314 (AD 1390), T.C.D. H.3.18, 26.1–35.28 (AD 1511) and National Library of Ireland MS G53 1–22 (17th century), and fragments in British Library Add. 4783.

The provenance for the Royal Irish Academy's MS 23 P12, aka The Book of Ballymote, is given as "Ballymote (Co. Sligo)". That's it. There's not much point in digging any deeper because it is based on Leabhar Gearr Uí Cheallaig [lost] though Trinity College Dublin has a copy dated 1728 partly transcribed by an Irish scholar/antiquarian called Richard Tipper, or Tupper.

Trinity College's manuscript, H3. 18, is listed as 'fifteenth and sixteenth centuries' and a "composite" manuscript. Provenance is the celebrated Edward Lhuyd (d. 1709), second Keeper of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum

Lhuyd is of interest as he turns up in the Welsh chapter of Revisionist Historiography. He was a Welsh antiquarian and celebrated as a pioneering linguist. The first reference to Ogham, sometimes more poetically called the Celtic Tree Alphabet, is attributed to Lhuyd in 1702. According to Barry Cunliffe, Lhuyd was the first to name Goidelic and Brythonic 'Celtic' languages.

The Book of Ballymote, said to be a late 14th century compilation of "older works, mostly loose manuscripts and valuable documents handed down from antiquity that came into possession of McDonagh", contains the only known copy of the 'Auraicept na n-Éces' (scholars' primer), prized as "one of the three main sources of the manuscript tradition about Ogham". The provenance is unknown

The Book of Ballymote, like many of its kind, has made history by its wanderings. For over a hundred years it was a treasured possession of the McDonaghs of Corran. About the beginning of the 16th century, it fell into the possession of the O'Donnells with whom it remained until the Flight of the Earls in 1603. From 1620 until 1767 it was in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. It disappeared from the library and was later found in Burgundy, France. In 1785 it was returned to the Royal Irish Academy where it remained as one of the Academy's most treasured possessions.

Lhuyd also managed to transcribe much of the Latin inscription on the enigmatic 'Pillar of Eliseg' near Valle Crucis Abbey, Denbighshire. Just in time as the inscription then became almost illegible, due to weathering. Nonetheless Lhuyd's transcript is considered 'remarkably accurate'.
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Mick Harper
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The way RevHist deals with all these supposedly antient alphabets is thisaway

If there are Dark Age inscriptions on the stone (Ogham, Pictish, Runic etc) ask why they are not in an alphabet people could read. Inscriptions are made to be read. If you are told these are a very special kind of inscription not intended for public consumption because of their sacredness (or something) tell them it worked

- they all vanished from profane view
- they all stayed hidden from prying eyes for a thousand years
- they all re-appeared in new countries keen to show how old they are.

We are, I think, at the point when we can conclude that the presence of any of these mystery scripts are a sure sign that the medium featuring them (the Franks Casket being a notable example) is a fake. Whether this principle can be extended to Etruscan is a bit of a Holy Grail.
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