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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;+VGO.DVCKS, post: 8029364, member: 110504&quot;][ATTACH=full]1391278[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1391279[/ATTACH]</p><p>AEthelred II, Helmet penny of (?) Cambridge, c. 1003-1009.</p><p>Obv. AEthelred to left, &#039;in armour and radiate helmet&#039; (quoting North).</p><p>(From 7 /8 o&#039;clock: ) +EDELRED REX ANGL.</p><p>Rev. voided long cross, &#039;each limb terminating in three crescents&#039; [as in the preceding, equally iconic &#039;Long Cross&#039; issue --except when they don&#039;t, for reasons of space]. </p><p>+PVL [/] FSIG [/] E M&#039;O [/] RANT.&nbsp; (Wulfsige, moneyer in (?) Cambridge ([G]RANT.&nbsp; ...&#039;Wulfsige&#039; translates to &#039;Wolf&#039;s victory,&#039; demonstrating the ongoing, early Germanic linguistic continuity between Old English and Old Norse (/Danish).</p><p>North 775, with predictable variations in both legends.&nbsp; (More on that follows.)</p><p><br /></p><p>...So, of course, I had to get an example of the Probus prototype.&nbsp; From the esteemed Vcoins dealer Marc Breitsprecher.&nbsp; With thanks to one and all for talking him up in various posts on the forum.&nbsp; This one is from Rome (where Aurelian was building the city walls), citing a reference that&#039;s beyond my purview.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1391287[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>I like how Probus&#039; shield, possibly covered with one of several available forms of mail, is reinterpreted, by British numismatists if not AEthelred&#039;s celators, as a continuation of AEthelred&#039;s mail hauberk, which is very evident in the lower left.&nbsp; But in this&nbsp; AEthelred example, the strap and the round buckle /broach suggest that, relative to the prototype, the die-sinkers knew what they were looking at. </p><p>Yes, chain mail, along with the earlier scale variation, were in use in the Roman Empire by the later 3rd century.&nbsp; Given which, I have to like how, regarding such innovations, Cnut&#039;s helmet issue, featuring a conical, &#039;Viking /Norman&#039; helmet, involves then state-of-the-art military technology, rather than looking back to late Classical precedent.&nbsp; (Dating to the later part of his reign, c. 1024-1030; WYNSTAN ON LVN[DE].)</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1391296[/ATTACH]</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1391297[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Post stuff with Helmets!&nbsp; Yeah, I already thought about it, and I want to see some (More) Helmets!</b></p><p>...Okay, if you&#039;ve gotten this far, you just mmmMight be interested in the problemmatic reverse legend, with the moneyer and mint.&nbsp; Right, it&#039;s &#039;PVLFSIGE M&#039;O RANT.&#039;&nbsp; From North --the best reference I have for medieval English, to this day-- the only mints for this type with a moneyer Wulfsige are Cambridge, Exeter, and York.&nbsp; Among North&#039;s renderings of any of them, in the original Old English, the nearest equivalent is Cambridge, generally appearing on the coins as &#039;Grant&#039; (op. cit. p.p. 163; cf. 167 for York).</p><p>This was when it was time to pay particular attention to the space available to the celator.&nbsp; You might notice --as I did, after the fact-- that of the ostensible three crescents at the terminus of each arm of the cross, the ones on the left (and bottom) are somewhat truncated.&nbsp; This guy knew he was running out of room. </p><p>In this context, I found this fantastic article online.&nbsp; Academic, old, and to all appearances, methodologically solid.</p><p><a href="https://brittlebooks.library.illinois.edu/brittlebooks_open/Books2012-12/nordca0001angsax/nordca0001angsax.pdf" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://brittlebooks.library.illinois.edu/brittlebooks_open/Books2012-12/nordca0001angsax/nordca0001angsax.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://brittlebooks.library.illinois.edu/brittlebooks_open/Books2012-12/nordca0001angsax/nordca0001angsax.pdf</a></p><p>An article on Anglo-Saxon coins found in Finland, published in 1921.</p><p>The examples listed include two for the mint of Grantebryce (Cambridge) from the moneyer Wulfsige (p. 37).&nbsp; The example of the helmet type has the legend,</p><p>+PVLFSIG M&#039;O GRAN.</p><p>Here the &#039;E&#039; in &#039;PVLFSIGE&#039; is sacrificed for the &#039;G&#039; in &#039;GRAN.&#039;&nbsp; (#100.)</p><p>A later example has the legend, +P.VLFSIGE M-O GRAI\.&nbsp; (103; &#039;Last Small Cross&#039; issue, c. 1009-1017; cf. North p. 160.)</p><p>In other words, even in late Anglo-Saxon mints --truly state-of-the-art for the western half of a conspicuously small continent-- the die sinkers were always faced with the same issue (space), and did what they had to, effectively on a daily basis.&nbsp; ...So, Yeah, I&#039;m breathing easier about the attribution to Wulsige on Cambridge.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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