ancient coins

Bert, Before you come out with guns blazing know who your target is. Harlan Berk is a man not a woman, see photo below. I've learned more from Harlan Berk's books & articles than a self-professed expert on mythology. Your ignorance on the subject of numismatics is disconcerting & exposed. Before you challenge someone to a duel make sure you're not just shooting blanks.

 

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Well, I've consulted with my good friend Patrick mefford on the subject who doesn't know a thing about coins; but has many an academia accolades in philosophy, Greek, and other ancient cultures. I'm going to attempt to encourage him to join this site because the guy is a walking encyclopedia + seems pretty objective, autonomous, and rational in his approach to research. I tend to be more conspirator and fanatical in nature.

 

Al, What on earth made you think I was targeting Harlan Berk ??? Why should I, never even having heard of him ? We were discussing Phanes, and, and trying to discover his (or her !) unknown identity. The Greek word, "Phanes" means, so I understand, light (or lamp), and, symbolically, we might all endeavour to illuminate our messages. I accept the, possibly, unrivalled expertise of Harlan Berk. But you introduced him, as your numismatic "god" into the conversation. You speak of my disconcerting ignorance - shall I take that as a compliment ? - You see, I am rather good at "shooting blanks" !!!

 

You are wrong because you fall into the fallacy of the unnamed collective. Who are "the ancients"? Many people were alive at every time and place. They did not all believe the same things at the same time in the same way. You can believe what you want about the Phanes coins. We have several theories to explain them (plural: more than one is known). Those theories are not all internally consistent and, AFAIK, none has been tested.

 

You need a dictionary of ancient Greek. And you need to put that into a context of historical philology to understand how words change over time. Do you understand that the English word "silly" carried the same meaning as the English word "pious"? If you care about the Phanes coins, then you need more information about the time and place of their creation.

 

Bert, You have downgraded this entire thread to personal attacks on me & other people. Why don't you take a nap & sleep it off .

 

My brain saw "Hittite" at first glance, and then the spelling of "Hightities" made me look again, because I've never heard of the ancient Hightities. Of course, that doesn't mean there weren't any Hightities in the ancient world, but I've never heard of a whole empire of Hightities.

Now I'm trying to imagine a battle against an army of Hightitie warriors.

Now I'm trying to imagine...well, never mind.

 

Does this battle have anything to do with Amazon Warriors?

 

Good idea, Al. After a "duel" with you I'll need to take a nap and sleep it off. You can discuss this nonsense with your good friend, but not forget to tell him that the one who may need a Greek dictionary is not me but an expert online. I have not enjoyed your exchanges, and, you may share any further thoughts with kaparthy, or anyone else who envisages themselves as having solved the riddle of Phanes. Sleep well !!!

 

The mighty Hightities probably didn't need to be as brutal as the Amazonians. They probably didn't even have to carry weapons. In their hands, I mean.

 

Circling back to the original question a bit, coinage appears to have been something of an "Eureka!" moment for humanity. There's plentiful evidence of the use of precious metals for barter well before 600 BC, but for whatever unknown reason everyone simply accepted the necessity of weighing it out each time a transaction was made, rather than pre-measuring it and giving it a badge of legal tender.

The truly amazing part is how quickly the major powers of the world became monetized following millennia of barter economy: Asia Minor and then Greece and the Achaemenids between 650-500 BC, India between 600-500 BC, and China somewhere between 700-500 BC.

If you want to make enemies in the numismatic world, claim that there was only one true invention event, and it spread via word of mouth and conquest.

I haven't seen one posted yet (this forum doesn't seem to have yet seen the light that is dirt cheap ancient coins from central/southern Asia), so I'll throw in the Gandharan Shatamana, purportedly India's first coin, and maybe/maybe not an indigenous invention



Curiously, these weigh almost exactly as much as two Achaemenid sigloi / one shekel, and Gandhara had been subjugated by the Achaemenids by the time of Darius. Coincidence?

 

Allow me to quote from Barclay Head, more than 100 years ago:

http://snible.org/coins/hn/ionia.html#571

"The interpretation of the remarkable inscription has given rise to much controversial discussion, for a résumé of which see Babelon, Traité, ii. I, 62. The weight, the type, and the Ionian character of the incuse reverse, all indicate Ephesus as the place of mintage rather than Halicarnassus, to which Doric city P. Gardner once attributed it, partly because it was acquired at Budrum, and partly on the ground that a certain Phanes of Halicarnassus is mentioned by Herodotus (iii. 4) as a mercenary soldier at the court of Amasis, whose service he deserted for that of Cambyses on his invasion of Egypt in B.C. 525.

On various grounds, as Babelon (op. cit.) has pointed out, this attribution is unacceptable. The coin is certainly Ephesian, as the stag is the symbol of the great goddess of Ephesus. The relation of the inscription to the type is in so far certain that it seems to mean ‘I am the signet of Phanes’. The doubtful word in the genitive case Φαενος, Φαννος, or Φανος, has been differently explained. Newton (Num. Chron., 1870, p. 238) regarded it as referable only to the type and to the cultus of the goddess Artemis; and he suggested as a translation ‘I am the sign of the Bright one’. Such an interpretation of the inscription would imply that the coin was a hierarchical issue from the temple treasury. It is, however, far more probable that Φηνος or Φαννος is not an epithet of Artemis, but the name, in the genitive case, of some prominent citizen of Ephesus, it may be of a despot, or of a magistrate, or of a member of one of the wealthy Ephesian families of bankers and money-lenders (see Babelon, Traité, l. c.)."

(end quote)

Here we have a 100-year-old summary of the then-current theories. Harlan Berk's opinion is popular but nothing has disproved Newton's theory that Phanes meant "bright One". We will never know. If Phanes was a person we won't know if it is one one who went to Egypt with Cambyses or some other Phanes.

 

Ed, Thanks for adding to the controversy. Anything Ernest Babelon had to say is worth digesting, his contribution to numismatics is underappreciated by most of us today. I don't know if we'll ever get a rock solid attribution to the famous "Phanes" coins, but no doubt scholars aren't giving up the search...

 

I didn't see this thread until it blew up with a bit of a flame war. Maybe I can get it back on track. The question is really quite open to interpretation. Most people seem to consider a 'coin' one thing, 'money' another. Further complicating things is the concept of 'wealth'. Definitions of all those terms are all over the place. The Chinese were using cowrie shells as a form of wealth long before those in the west were 'out of their diapers' (by about an astonishing 1,000 years!!). Even imitation cowries of bone, stone and even metal pre-date western coinage by hundreds of years. Sadly, our ethnocentric predispositions seem to negate actual human history. The Chinese invented coinage plain and simple. It's only open to interpretation by those who are rather ignorant of other cultures and history.