Post an Old Coin and an Old Tune...

My young daughter sent me this.. I nearly turned it off after a minute or two... sometimes you have to hang in for the payoff .... Gaga and Elton John.
Highly recommended for a live performance... if you don't hang around until Elton John shows up - well - that's your loss.



I tie it in with Vespasian - well, I definitely have the quote wrong ... but it was something along the lines of: "he is the only man who actually improved after gaining the purple"..

 

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Carthage 300-264 BCE AE 19 Sardinia 19mm 5.62g Tanit wreathed Horse hd r ayin SNG COP 151 JP Righetti collection

 

Sicily Akragas Punic occup 213-210 BC AR Half Shekel 19 mm 2.9g Male head r Triptolemos wreath grain -Horse leaping r Punic Ḥ SNG COP 378

 

Great tune.. I loved watching this reaction video of these young kids hearing that song for the first time....

 

Well, if you're going to have Phil Collins, you need his fellow Genesis-member, Peter Gabriel:



An old one, purchased from Pegasi in 2000:


Tiberius, AD 14-37.
Roman orichalcum Dupondius, 14.32 g, 29.15 mm, 1 h.
Rome, AD 22/23.
Obv: PIETAS, veiled, diademed and draped bust of (Vipsania? as) Pietas, right.
Rev: DRVSVS CAESAR TI AVGVSTI F TR POT ITER around large SC.
Refs: RIC Tiberius 43; BMCRE Tiberius 98; CBN Tiberius 74; Cohen 1; RCV 1741.

 

I originally had the intense Testorossa scene when this was first played in Miami Vice. Changed to the Album, cuz I figgerred most folks would not understand it.

 

Lol, ALWAYS excellent!

 

By way of combining Peter Gabriel with the Phil Collins motif:

 

I've had this coin for many years now. And here's an old tune that has nothing to do with the coin.

 

Nothing to do with the coin either... but seems appropriate...
RIP

 

Notes from the author/musician:

This song to the Hurrian goddess Nikkal, is the oldest piece of music for which we have both the words and the accompanying musical notes.

The work was written on clay tablets around 3500 years ago, and was discovered by archaeologists in the 1950’s in the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit. The tablets, which are written in the Hurrian language using Sumerian cuneiform script, have been studied for years by a number of eminent scholars, and several theories have been advanced as to how the music should be interpreted. In my opinion, the most thorough and convincing interpretation (and by far the most musical), is that offered by archaeomusicologist, Dr. Richard J. Dumbrill, and that is the one which you hear in this video. The long-necked lute you see me playing is a cross between the Turkish baglama and the Persian setar. I made this instrument myself as an experiment. It has four strings but the bass notes are a double course. It is tuned F-C-F. Lutes of this type have been played since the most ancient times throughout Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The pipes you hear are replicas of the 5000 year old silver pipes discovered in the Sumerian city of Ur in the 1920’s. These are reed instruments but since I cannot play wind instruments and sing at the same time, I sampled the pipes and I am playing them by means of a pedal keyboard, similar to the kind of pedalboard used by organists. My left foot controls the lower register pipe, and my right foot the higher register. Players of these instruments used the technique known as “circular breathing”, which is still used today for wind instruments like the Armenian duduk, and the Australian didgeridoo. This song was performed live, in a single pass. Nothing was added or overdubbed. The text of the song is not well understood because the Hurrian language has not been thoroughly studied and the original tablet has bits missing. The goddess Nikkal, like most lunar deities, was associated with fertility and childbirth. Here is a very rough idea of what experts believe is being sung by the singer. I have tried to make this poetic rather than literal.

I have made offerings to the goddess
That she will open her heart in love,
And that my sins will be forgiven.
May my jars of sweet sesame oil please her,
That she may look kindly upon us,
And make us fruitful.
Like the sprouting fields of grain,
May women bring forth with their husbands
And may those who are yet virgins
One day be blessed with children.

**I do not have a coin to share with this post - but I thought it quite an amazing thing that some may appreciate.

 

@Clavdivs, this is absolutely brilliant.
It's truly great when people who are up to this level of (1)informed (2)speculation are willing to just say, 'Sure; Why Not?'
...Nearest parallel I have any acquaintance with would be some academic who recorded Beowulf in the original Old English, with the more minimalist accompaniment that might have gone with a recitation of the (already very musical) alliterative 'half-lines' of the metrical structure.
...It's too late to even go looking online for an example of that, but Thank you for this!!! You're lighting up the synapses like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard.

 

I've had this one a while. Purchased from Henry Clay Lindgren of Antioch Associates in 2004. The Celator did a little blurb on the sale, illustrating my coin.



And an old tune that has inexplicably been an earworm for the past two or three days.

 

Think I’ll add a coin to your video, Clavdivs. With a lyre:


I really liked the video and song. I was surprised at the end: Throughout the song he had been moving between F and Gb (subsititution for Bb minor). Suddenly he struck a clean D, which is the major third for Bb major. Perhaps this is the resolution, when his sins are forgiven. Or perhaps he played wrong and took a Miles. In any event, thanks for sharing.

 

Caria. Kasolaba circa 420-400 BC.
Hemiobol AR 7 mm., 0,46 g

 

Two misunderstood artists:





At least one of them rightfully so.

 

LOL

 

We all love ancient coins.. but I have to say this @Romancollector - this is so special. Just WOW!



I do not know how to say thank you for posting it here... so I will go with ham..lol:

 

Memories from my youth..



This music video was filmed in the Zodiac club in Oxford. When I was at uni there in the late 90s I used to go there every Saturday to mosh. 25 years later and I still mosh at every opportunity, well until Coronavirus put an end to all that stuff. (I did mention before that I am not THAT old).

As for the coin, here is a creep (many of his contemporaries would agree) from the Byzantine times.