Can anyone assist? I have been browsing this text from Richard Cumberland of 1685 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A35425.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext “An essay towards the recovery of the Jewish measures & weights, comprehending their monies, by help of ancient standards, compared with ours of England useful also to state many of those of the Greeks and Romans, and the eastern nations” Centrally he finds (correctly) that there was an ancient Jewish Shekel which was near exactly half an Averdupois ounce, at c. 14.19g (219 grains) It seems he knows that was represented by a Tyre shekel/tetradrachm – but he apparently does not have access to one – but he deduces its weight from a couple of Carthaginian coins which he (again near correctly) judges used the same weight standard. However he also gets it from two other coins with what he calls “Samaritan” inscriptions. One of these he records as being in the Library of Charles I (!) and having been weighed by Archbishop Ussher (!!) So - I am trying to figure out what exactly this rather grand coin, once belonging to Charles I, would be? Perhaps a Phoenician silver? The most frustrating part is there is an illustration in the original text labelled “Samaritan Shekell” – but it is not reproduced in any of the online version I can find……….. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A35425.0001.001/1:3?rgn=div1;vid=50948;view=fulltext Rob T
Can not give you a straight answer, but there were several inventories made of the collection of Charles I, at the time before it was supposed to be lost at the great Whitehall fire of 1698AD. maybe some more specifics here? : https://www.jstor.org/stable/42680107 and: https://doinghistoryinpublic.org/2019/01/15/the-lost-coin-collection-of-the-stuart-monarchs/
Hello Anthony Many thanks indeed! Since this account comes 200 years after the event, I shall allow myself to read a little between the lines. The key comment on the Chas I coin collection seems to me the statement that “the medals have been taken away and purloin’d by the thousands, and irrecoverable” That seem to concern 80,000+ coins – perhaps all sold off by the sort of Taliban/Puritans that surrounded Cromwell. The coins lost in the fire of c. 1697 seem to be a second Royal collection (?). So – if the coin in question still exists – maybe the Hermitage is the place to look? Prior to this I had assumed the earliest “oriental coin collection” in England would be the one formed by John Greaves c. 1640, in Egypt. But the coin in question seems to have been acquired probably earlier (?) Kind of you to take an interest in these insular matters. Perhaps you notice that Cumberland took time to unravel and comprehend Huygens' then recent discoveries concerning the pendulum? No doubt better than I ever will Rob T PS during the conquest of Baghdad a few years back I pointed out that when Parliamentary troops took Oxford around 1646, Black Tom Fairfax immediately sent troops to guard the Bodleian library. Likewise we seem to owe the preserved medieval glass at York and Beverley to his thoughtfulness. Let me know if you are ever in Yorkshire, the Fairfax tomb - in a very humble village church - is a memorable visit. Rob T
