Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon

[sovay]

Tonight in unexpected numismatics: identifying two kinds of coins in five different writing systems for my mother. The former had classical-looking pomegranates on the obverse and were obviously Israeli because they said so in Hebrew, English, and Arabic; they turned out to be Israeli pounds or lirot issued between 1967 and 1980 and the design of a triple branch of budding pomegranates looked familiar to me because it was patterned after the shekels issued in the first year of the First Jewish Revolt (66–67 CE). My grandparents almost certainly brought them home from their visit to Israel in the mid-1980's. The latter were very worn, thin copper or brass cash and I thought Chinese, which meant the latest they could have been issued was 1911; they turned out to have been struck in Guangdong in the reign of the Guangxu Emperor, specifically between 1890 and 1908, and the script I didn't recognize on the reverse was Manchu. We have no idea where they came from. I really appreciate the role the internet played in allowing me to stare at images of different kinds of cash until I recognized enough characters to narrow my search parameters, because I don't actually read either Chinese or Manchu. I mean, I know now that the Manchu for "coin" is boo and it looks like this and the Chinese inscription on the obverse of that issue is 光緒通寶 which simply means "Guangxu currency" (Guāngxù tōng bǎo) and the reason it took me forever to track down two of those characters turns out to be the difference between Traditional and Simplified Chinese, but seriously, without the internet, that would have just been a lot of interesting metal to me.

(Me to spatch: "This is ridiculous. If I can read cuneiform, I should be able to read Chinese. I feel incredibly stupid." Rob to me: "You can't call yourself stupid if you're teaching yourself Chinese!")

Comments

[asakiyume]

Thank you spatch. Please make sure sovay repeats what you told her re: teaching yourself Chinese.

That is **amazing** that you have that Chinese coin. So cool. And I remember seeing Manchu script. It looks sort of like vertical Arabic.

[sovay]

That is **amazing** that you have that Chinese coin. So cool.

They turned up with the Israeli pounds in a small weather-damaged bag in the summer kitchen. Most of my grandmother's coin collection was either U.S. oddities or currency from countries she visited with my grandfather, but since they never visited China and in any case I'm pretty sure imperial cash wouldn't have been legal tender for years, their provenance is completely unknown. They are totally worthless in collector's terms, but since I don't want to get rid of them, that's fine!

And I remember seeing Manchu script.

That's neat! Where were you?

It looks sort of like vertical Arabic.

My father actually asked if it was Arabic when my mother first brought out the coins. I didn't think so, but then I didn't know what it was instead. Now I know.

[asakiyume]

Where were you?

Grad school--there were some students doing Manchu. (Not me though!)