Unintended benefits of ancient coin collecting.

Well the obvious one is getting to know the history, but this hobby also developed my linguistic knowledge!
Even without taking any proper courses in Latin, I now can read and properly pronounce Latin names and even understand some of the terms and their meaning, given my area of study involve a lot of scientific terms in Latin, it really comes in handy!
Another one is that I can read words written in Greek (although mostly ancient Greek), and to a minor extant Cyrillic script (to a level of 3 year old).
And a more niche area is the improvement in my understanding of the 'vatteluttu' script of Tamil language, which is slightly different from the modern Tamil script (main difference being the modern script has dots), given I already know Tamil, it further enriched my understanding of the evolution of this classical language.
For example, this French Indian coin from 1700s mentions the city name as புதுசசெரி (Puduchachery), but the people pronounced it as Puduchērry back in that time, whereas the modern script in the arch simply states புதுச்சேரி, same as how people used to say, (although English lacks the term for short and long letters for proper pronunciation in the arch).

Same thing with this 1000 year old Chola inscription, the words are not spaced, letters not dotted, and some have slight variations, but the pronunciations and the meaning are the same as the modern language, and collecting Chola/Pandya era coins made me aware of this issue!
I came to know people didn't use dots because they used to write on palm leaves, and unlike scribbling, making dots would pierce them, and since stone inscriptions were copied from instructions on palm leaves, the resulting words also lacked dots, but certain words were pronounced as if dots were just implied and people simply read and understood them as such.


Please share your unintended benefits of ancient coin collection or coin collection in general!

 

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I have learned quite a bit of Latin and Greek (ancient) as well!
I am a linguist by trade and have always enjoyed languages. Never did it occur to me that collecting ancient coins would expand my linguistic knowledge as well. Though I suppose it makes sense
Unfortunately, Latin and Greek don't help much with my working languages; Korean and Somali.

 

These 6 came quickly to mind (and I'm sure there are others):

1. I have a much-improved grasp on Latin and Greek languages.

2. My list of good friends increased nicely.

3. My knowledge of history/geography in my chief area of interest (1st century Judea) grew even more than I would have thought; plus as further bonus my knowledge of history/geography grew to cover from as far west as Britain, as far east as Babylon; and including Rome, Greece, all of Asia Minor, and Egypt -- and chronologically from as early as 5th century BC through to the Medieval period.

4. My already large bibliophilic library expanded by a few hundred titles.

5. My ancient coin collection splashed over into a beautiful ancient artifact collection that fills a large display cabinet.

6. I have a wide array of tactile "pass around" illustrations for teaching.

 

My coin collecting is kind of a side effect of my interest in history. But yet another side effect of that is financial instability

EDIT: Oh, BENEFITS? Well I guess that would be some knowledge with latin.

 

@philologus_1 brought up a good one - good friends.
I've met so many amazing people in the ancients forums here on CT.

 

Collecting postage stamps/ butterflies/ coins teach you history/ geography/ economics/ languages/ most important....brings you happiness/ always gives you a reason to dream about the next auction/ coin aquisition.
Coins keep their beauty forever/ unless improperly handled
Best thing, your brain is a sponge it keeps all that knowledge/ unlike computers which freeze up/ get viruses/ overloaded.

 

My study of ancient language taught me that people who believe they know how to pronounce things tend to ignore the fact that Greek and Latin were around for centuries and spread over huge areas and not all of the variations matched Cicero. I wonder how it would go for a time traveler who made fun of Sheptimish Sheverish. I enjoy listening to YouTube videos of certain scholars with accents different than mine. When they add or delete a letter here and there, I get over it. How?

I am also strongly of the opinion that history is not a study of what was as much as it is a study of what various people perceived it to be both at that time and as it was seen in some later time and place. Even today we have no general agreement on who is the hero and who is the villain. I once believed that no fair history could be written until all those who lived during that time were gone. Now, I push that 'safe' date back several millennia. We all see truth through different eyes. What?

The most common question form a toddler is 'Why?' The most common answer is 'Because I said so!' Later we go to school to learn what we are required to parrot back to get the exit paperwork. Why?

Dates require footnotes explaining the calendar system then and now. When?

That leaves 'Who'? I have met some very interesting people over my years being interested in history and coins. Some of them were really great people; some we don't miss. Still, I have the most fond memories of about a hundred 'Coin-friends' of whom about half of whom I have actually seen in person. Those people, real and virtual, actual and imagined, are the most significant side 'benefit' of my life in coins. For those of you I have imagined to be a good friend, I only ask you don't burst my bubble and tell me you really are a jerk.

 

7. It attracts the ladies.

 

Continue to increase my knowledge of history and mainly also interacting with folks. I actually don't know anyone in person who collects ancients, though I have some friends from the ancient and medieval coin group on facebook, as well as y'all on this forum.

 

I am a very nice guy…

 

Also....you get really like the Postman/ when he rings your doorbell/ even my dog wags his stubby tail.

 

Good points and for anyone claiming to know how to pronounce Latin, careful here. There is considerable debate, not all of it pleasant, over how Latin was pronounced in Classical Times (the period of most of our Ancient coins). So, if your denarius says "VENI, VIDI, VICI" (and it better not), do you pronounce the V as in modern English or as the English W ? What about the C? Is it a soft ch sound (as in church) or a hard C sound as in car? Believe me, in academia much ink, maybe even a little blood, has been spilled in this debate. By the way, I am curious about something that maybe some of our European members can resolve. How in European countries does one pronounce Latin, with the Italianate or ecclesiastical soft consonants (depending on the following vowel) or the hard pronunciation of the Classical version? And while we are at it. The pronunciation of Ancient and modern Greek is quite different, though the orthography not so much. In Europe, when talking numismatically, which one is used?

 

For me, the unintended benefits of ancient coin collecting are:

• Meeting nice like-minded collectors here
• Learning more about history
• Appreciating the stories that these coins have to tell

For next year, I've decided to do the following, which are certainly things I never would have thought of before I started collecting.

• Create a website with photos of my coins and write-ups on each one. I've already purchased the domain name and hosting.
• Write a novel partially based on the post-Alexander era. I have a stack of books next to my bed for research, and I'm already outlining the plot.

 

I took 3 years of Latin and was always taught that the C's were pronounced like K's, e.g. Kaiser instead of Seazer for example. But who knows?

 

The ONLY negative aspect of coin collecting....seeing all those beautifull coins on sixbid auction sites/ that you cannot afford lots of those on upcoming Triton XXV event

 

Collecting Greek Imperials may help correctly pronounce Latin like in Ancient times because the Latin names have been phonetically adapted in Greek.


For ex. the name Quadratus. On this coin from Antioch the rev. legend is ΕΠΙ ΚΟΥΑΔΡΑΤΟΥ : epi kouadratou, so you know the Latin Qua- was pronounced "kwa-".


On this other coin of Antioch the name of the emperor is AVT K Γ MЄ KV ΔЄKIOC TPAIANOC CЄB. Knowing that in Latin it is Gaius Messius Quintus Traianus Decius, you see that Decius was pronounced "Dekious" and not Dessious or Deshious.


Same for Volusianus : in Greek they wrote OVOΛOUCIANON (accusative here), so you know it was pronounced "Woloussianous".

 

Aha, so weni widi wiki

 

Indeed

I couldn't locate my copy of "1066 And All That", so I am paraphrasing, but it recounts that the ancient Gauls were discouraged when they heard Caesar describing them as "Weeny, Weedy, Weaky"

ATB,
Aidan.

 

I never cared much for history prior to starting to collect ancient coins. Fast forward a number of years and my first conversation with my now-wife was about history (segueing into ancient coins) while we met happenstance during a bus tour we individually took to Stonehenge.

To say coins are meaningful outside of just collecting would be a significant understatement!

 

Yes, also notice that Greeks at that time used the Roman letter C where the Romans used the letter S. Actually, the comparison is not entirely accurate. What it indicates is that the letters C and S were pronounced the same way, or were similar in sound, but that this really is comparing two unknowns. We cannot be certain how the letter C was sounded. It may be that the Greeks pronounced the letters differently and were not letters indicating that they were pronounced the same way in say, Carthage and Antioch. I remember a professor of Greek telling the class that comparing names like this showed that Latin was pronounced a certain way based on transliterated letters in Greek. It also seems that in one of Attic comic playwright's plays sheep bleated, Beta eta eta, Beta eta eta. Now either Beta and eta were were prounced as short A, (ah) or Greek sheep baa differently from those of other lands. Modern Greek is no help in this study as I found out in Athens some time go. (fortunately the Greeks are kind and accomodating people). Fascinating study. I hope to find the answers like this in Elysium one day, or if things terminate differently, perhaps in Hades.