The Nilometer

Thanks, interesting link!

Do you mean the Festival of Isis? That's a truly fascinating series. The best resource for those issues that I've found online are on the Tesorillo site:
https://www.tesorillo.com/isis/index1.htm

Hermes-Thoth found some popularity outside Egypt as well. Here he is on a coin from Tyre from the reign of Gallienus.

GALLIENUS
Very Rare. AE Dichalkon. 14.21g, 30.9mm. PHOENICIA, Tyre, circa AD 253-268. Rouvier 2529 var. (rev legend); AUB –; BMC –. O: IMP C P LIC GALLIENVS AVG, radiate, draped and cuirassed bust right, seen from front. R: COL TVRO MET, Hermes-Thoth, half-naked, standing left, holding papyrus roll and caduceus; to left, ibis standing left; to right, murex shell set upon palm tree.
Ex Dennis Rider Collection of the Coins of Tyre; Ex John A. Seeger Collection (CNG 172, 5 Sep 2007), lot 125
Notes:
In his History of the Phoenicians, the 1st century writer Philo of Byblos tells of an incarnation of Hermes-Thoth, known as Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice Great), who was advisor and scribe to Kronos (the Phoenician god El) and who assisted him in the overthrow of Uranus. A few centuries later, the early Christian authors Lactantius and Augustine would write of Hermes Trismegistus as a mortal man, a wise Pagan philosopher of an earlier antiquity whom they claimed foresaw the coming of Christ. This Hermes Trismegistus was credited as the author of thousands of ancient texts expounding upon philosophy, magic, and the divine, including the Emerald Tablet, the Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum.
The coins of Tyre showing Hermes-Thoth are distinctive in their depiction of this syncretic deity, capturing his diverse essence with an array of associated symbols - the ibis (of Thoth), caduceus (of Hermes), and papyrus scroll (as patron of writers, and as the divine scribe, Hermes Trismegistus). These issues date from the reigns of Philip the Arab (AD 244-249) through Gallienus (AD 253-268).

 

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I found one other coin example which may be of interest to those following this thread. It is one of the late 4th century "anonymous" bronzes. On the obverse is Isis and on the reverse is Anubis along with the legend VOTA PVBLICA. Reportedly this is the last series of coins showing any Egyptian deities whatsoever. There is a link attached below from a numismatics blog that covered the subject.



http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/numismatics/entry/anubis_tokens_and/

 

Yup! And actually, that's yet another example of syncretism, with Hermes and Anubis combined to make Hermanubis. On the coin he seems to be wearing Roman-style military dress.

I just shared my example in another thread the other day, but well, here it is again...


FESTIVAL OF ISIS
Anonymous (temp. Julian II). Rome mint, mid 4th Century. AE. 0.79g, 12mm. Alföldi, Festival pl. VIII, 11; Vagi 3393. O: [ISIS F-A]RIA, draped bust of Isis right, wearing hem-hem crown and necklace. R: [VOTA P-]VBLICA, Hermanubis standing left, holding sistrum and caduceus.

The Tesorillo page I linked above has a well-written introduction to the series:
https://www.tesorillo.com/isis/intro1.htm

 

That's cool @zumbly ! I believe he is depicted with military dress on the coin as there are extant statues with Hermanubis depicted as a legionary, same with the crocodile god Sobek.

 

Awesome capture @zumbly ! Although I am not a huge Imperial fan, this is really cool. Thanks for posting.

 

It's not Imperial (another supercool Provincial )

 

Hmmm. I should have said Imperial PERIOD... Anything AFTER the Great Roman Republic.

 

All,

Just stumbled on this thread two years past the last post as I was researching something else. For an interesting twist on possible nileometers on a tiny Roman Egyptian dichalkon or chalkon coins see Eidelstein's "LIZ = 17" : a nilometer depiction on a coin of Hadrian from Alexandria (Schweizer Münzblätter, 63, 2013) at https://www.e-periodica.ch/cntmng?pid=smb-001:2013:63::9 . Several of the coins in that article were sold through Kuenker (here).

- Broucheion

 

Thanks for reviving this. Prompted me to try figure out more on the Nilometers, and people’s understanding of them. The fascinating article you link to fails to fully draw out a further measurement suggestion implicit in the images, that there is some connection between the modius and the cubit, since both are sort of alluded to on the coins.

The article also suggests the cubit was about 18 inches (45 cm) – which seems to be false in the case of the nilometers - which seems to use the “black cubit” of c. 21+ inches (54 cms).

So I hunted about a bit more – generally the tourist sites for the Roda Island nilometer do not even bother with things like the real purpose nor measurement on the nilometer. An Islamic site does give the correct length of the cubit, but incorrectly calls it Roman.

But if you go back to the travels of James Bruce around the 1770’s I judge he had the matter well pinned back then. He gives a correct sort of measure for the nilometer cubit, and then explains that it was used to set the level of tax for the year, according to the flood level. That is to say, the count of tax taken in grain (by the modius) accorded to the height of the flood, in cubits, that year. Wiki and a couple of other reports do mention the tax angle, but are still weaker on the measurement than Bruce was in the 1770’s.

The best guess I have for the origins of measurement, back in the neolithic or earlier, is that it went 4 fingers to the hand, four hands to the “foot”, 6 hands to the forearm (cubit). Because this works quite well even today – except of course for the foot. Also its much the one still used for horses. Quite obviously, the nilometers deviate from this – instead making the cubit 7 hands………

My hunch is that the nilometer cubit was jiggered about with as part of some forgotten tax scheme maybe as old as the pyramids. Its an idea that springs directly from the c. 1770 discussion, but somehow got lost in more modern treatments.

A cynic might even feel these days we are being kept 'in the dark about the black cubit', and maybe the sort of thing tax men get up to in general………….

Rob T