A Magical Tessera?

IONIA, Ephesus. Anoynmous
c. CE 1st century
Æ tessera, 19mm, 5.14 g
Obv: CKωΠI, stage kneeling left, head right; E to left, Φ to right
Rev: KHPIΛICωΔEΠPOCΠAΛVPIN surrounding a bee
Ref: SNG Copenhagen 355; BMC 186; SNG von Aulock 1875

There are a few colorful theories about these tessera. Barclay Head, in Historia Nvmorvm (1911), says:



Eckhel believed they were apothecaries' advertisements. Babelon felt they were charms with inscribed with magic formulae (the coin's legend, which is either nonsense or abbreviations whose meaning has been lost to history). Head thought they might be bee-charms (charms used in apiculture?).

In January, a CNG cataloger had this to say about the type:

"A series of tesserae, or tokens, was produced at the cult center of Ephesus during the Hellenistic period and later. The legends generally cannot be translated and are probably, for the most part, meaningless mystical formulae." [Note: I disagree with this statement. Surely there was some meaning of the engraved legend; we simply don't know what it was.]

A dozen years ago, another CNG cataloger offered this story:

"In the ancient world, many people carried magic talismans to ward off evil. In addition to symbols, these devices often included magical incatations, though many times there is no coherent meaning to the pharse. Such incantations are known as "Ephesian letters", since their source was alleged to be Ephesus, as is the case with our example. The obverse legend may refer to the Greek verb skopew, or "look", an allusion to the "evil eye" against which many of these objects were intended. The reverse legend can best be translated as "This, as a coating toward the disease," with PALVPIN being a corruption of palurion, some type of disease."

@Ardatirion, an avowed tessera junkie enthusiast, pointed me towards an interesting thesis about these strange bronzes, The Tesserae of Ephesos in the History of Medicine, published in a medical journal. I invite you to read that short article. To briefly summarize, the authors make a case for these being health amulets. While Asklepios and his family are perhaps the best known ancient medical figures, in Ephesus it was Artemis who assumed the role of protector of health, among her many other roles. Non-metal versions of these tessera were produced near the Temple of Artemis in earlier centuries. The charms were worn around the neck as treatment for disease and protection from evil.

So... I guess we may never know the real story behind these tesserae. Feel free to conjure up your own theory.

Perhaps I'll try holding this tessera and whispering kerilic ode proc palurin next time I have a headache

...

Please post any coins or information you feel is relevant or fun

 

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Wow thats neat, just the design alone is cool but the history is even more amazing. Nice grab, Tif.

 

What a fantastic piece! I love it when there is a mystery involved too.

Congrats!

 

As a former RPh I can tell you those are not for apothecary use. I have been to Ephesus and I had the opportunity to pick up a rare piece of antiqua while I was there. The apothecary idea is ludicrous. I know for a fact that these were used as slot machine tokens.

My ancient gambling machine (pre-dates the Antikythera Mechanism)

 

I thought about making this into a contest to see who can come up with the most creative explanation for the tessera. This would be a contender

 

Random interesting bee-related trivia, found when I was going down various rabbit holes looking for information about the tessera:

'Telling the Bees' is an old English folk custom where honeybees are treated like members of the family and kept up to date with all the goings on. Many of us are familiar with the tradition of telling the bees when someone in the family, especially the bee's primary keeper dies, but traditionally all family news, including births, marriages, etc., and even news about visitors, was told to the bees as a courtesy. There is a caveat to this, you had to be careful who told the bees what; for example only the Bride should tell the bees of an upcoming wedding and not anyone else, no matter how well intentioned they were. It was believed that failure to tell the bees of important news would result in them flying away, dying or stopping honey production. In both Britain and America, honeybees were even invited to Weddings and Funerals, and it they didn't make it, then food and drink from the wake, or a piece of Bridal cake was left by the hive.

This idea of telling the bees goes much deeper than news of births, marriages and deaths. It harks back to the idea that bees are messengers to the divine or to other realms. In many parts of Britain Bees are known as ‘The Little Servants of God’ or ‘The Small Messengers of God’ and this idea of bees as messengers dates back to Greek mythology where a Dryad once sent a message of love to Rhoecus. In Welsh folklore, bees, like man, were considered the only creatures to have come from Paradise and were seen as especially beloved by God.

-from https://bumblebeeconservation.org/news/anthonys-blog/bees-in-folklore

I've heard the phrase before, "telling the bees", but had no idea what it referenced. The context in which I heard it was a bit different but was meant as "tell the family and other important people" some bit of news.

 

Very Interesting

 

Fascinating and entertaining---What more can you ask!! Oh, yeah, a really cool 'Tesserae'

I vote for this theory as the most likely use of tokens!! Ah, so that's what all those niche's within the Colosseum were actually for.

 

Thoughtful and fascinating post, as is typical for you, TIF.

I've never heard the expression or custom of Telling The Bees but u bet I will regularly now that I'm aware. You know how that goes.

As for your piece and theories, I don't think much was done without meaning from such rich cultures.

 

Extremely, over-the-top cool! It looks too mystical to me to be a gaming token. The translation is simple - it means Om Mani Padme Hum.

 

A really neat find!

 

Wow => the coin ticks all of the cool-boxes!!

It's a tessera (tick), it has a stag and a fricken bee (tick-tick), it has amazing eye-appeal (big-tick) and yup, it even has an article stating that there may be some potential magic associated with this baby!!

=> winna-winna, coin-princess (one of my favs from your amazing collection)

... super-cool

 

Well, since the field is open to conjecture, I'll go with - apothecaries' advertisements for their bee charms which can double up as health amulets, with token possibly nonsensical incantation thrown in.

There, think I have all the bases covered . And now I want one...

 

Looks better than the CNG examples, awesome coin TIF! And thanks for the info, very fascinating.

 

oh wow, that's awesome TIF.

i love ancient medicine stuff, thanks for that link. i can't wait to read the referenced ancient coins and medicine article, plus several other cool ones on pubmed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1935216/?page=1

i can see one of JA's coin on this article...(or ex JA now i think)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1749338/

if at all interested in this type of stuff get this book, cheap on amazon...

The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World by Guido Manjo.

 

I don't really have any actual info to add, but I would like to say "great writeup," @TIF.

Random tidbit: for giggles, I pasted KHPIΛICωΔEΠPOCΠAΛVPIN into Google Translate. It thought it was Slovenian, but couldn't give me a translation.

Random musings: the word "tessera" in English refers to a tile used in creating a mosaic. Related is the word "tesselation," which refers to a tiling pattern. According to wikitionary.org, the root "tessera-" refers to the neuter, plural combining form of "τέσσᾰρες," meaning "four." Also related is the word "tesseract," which is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube (sometimes also referred to as a hypercube).

 

Good job assimilating all that information, Tif! I'm on mobile only for the next week, so would someone be kind enough to post my two examples? They still have the old bees story on them, I haven't updated my gallery to include the newer, more probable medical article.

Oh, and a slight correction is necessary to the CNG note. "Meaningless" is definitely the wrong word to use. Untranslatable or incomprehensible would work better. They had ritual and semiotic meaning as sounds and symbols, but are not interpretable as words in any sense we would be able to understand.

 

Sure! Here they are:


IONIA, Ephesos. 1st-2nd century AD
Æ Tessera (18mm, 2.74 g)
KHPIΛIC ωΔE ΠPOC ΠAΛVPIN
Bee
CKωΠI, recumbent stag; E to left, Φ to right
BMC 186; SNG Copenhagen 355

Head interprets the legend ΠAΛYPIN as related to υρoν, beehive, and ύppις, basket and conflated with πaλιν, bring back. From this, he suggests that the token would have been placed in a jar and shaken to produce a ringing sound, while the magical words were spoken. Thus, the piece would be a magical token, related to the folk tradition of ringing the bees into their hives. Such an explanation is perhaps overly fanciful.


IONIA, Ephesos. 1st-2nd century AD.
Æ Tessera in contemporary AR mount (23mm, 6.25, 1 h)
KHPIΛIC ωΔE ΠPOC ΠAΛVPIN
Bee
CKωΠI, recumbent stag; E to left, Φ to right
BMC 186; SNG Copenhagen 355

After reading it a few times, I figured this was the case and that the author meant "uninterpretable".

 

owwww i love this one, your pictures are one of the best.

 

Gosh, I have never seen such a fantastic tessera! Not only are the details sharp, but there is a legend, wow And great writeup, as usual.

Here is my tessera from Ephesus, with (supposedly) the cult statue of Diana on the reverse.


IONIA, Ephesus
2nd-3rd century AD
Lead Tessera - 3.02 grams, 19.38 mm, patined grey
Obv: Lilyflower
Rev: Diana of Ephesos cultus statue. Star on either side