8
Crescents Hair. Regini. c.50-30 BC. Celtic silver unit. 13-18mm. 1.22g.
1/2
Auctioneer has chosen not to publish the price of this lot
Norwich, Norfolk
Description
Crescents Hair. c.50-30 BC. Silver unit. 13-18mm. 1.22g.Head right with ringed-pellet eye, long pointed nose and stalk lips, beaded hairline, three rows of open crescents for hair./Triple-tailed horse left, corded mane, octopus/jellyfish motif above (formed by ringed-pellet above joined to three ringed-pellets by short lines and two longer lines between), open crescent above and in front, lyre below, beaded border. ABC 653, VA−, BMC−, S−. Good VF, huge flan of bright silver, beautifully ornamented, curious octopus motif. Unlisted by most major reference works. Easily the finest known example. EXCESSIVELY RARE only two others recorded, both badly chipped.
One of several early local issues of the Regini, this beautiful silver unit reveals important details that are missing from ABC 653 itself. We see a wide-eyed goddess, perhaps the Moon herself, with a full solar year’s worth of crescent moons for hair (you can count all twelve in ABC). It is night, and we are probably at sea. On its reverse, a Sun-horse marked as “ours” with its triple tail faces left towards tomorrow’s dawn between another pair of crescent moons: there may have been four in the original design, perhaps to signify the seasons. Plainer disks overhead may then represent full moons. With its wide, unsleeping eye (another celestial disk), the horse is restless – and in transit. We can see from ABC 653 that its feet are loosely fettered, right hind leg to left foreleg, to keep it from straying – or from rocking the boat. Because everyone knew that the sun was said to travel through the seas of night on a magical boat. Here, a large lyre symbol, conjoined with the horse’s legs, has morphed into a crescent-moon-boat with two stylized passengers or crew. Someone active then in Hampshire and West Sussex seems often to have ‘signed’ coinage with a lyre. Lyres were associated with the Sun god, and their many variant forms, including this boat and sometimes a comet, must reference different familiar tales, recited to the lyre. Our ruler may well have had major shipping interests. Very similar devices had appeared on recent Armorican coins, and these were times when prosperity depended as never before on the success of seaborne trade with newly conquered Roman Gaul. Cargo ships are expensive. Large ones to transport livestock, troops, passengers, or slaves, were more expensive still. Safety and success depended on the special skills of ships’ captains and navigators: knowing the moons and tides, reading the skies, predicting the weather. So whatever is that in the sky above, now that we can see it on this new coin? Has the emblematic lyre morphed again into something washed in from in the sea at night - an octopus or jellyfish for instance? Or is it perhaps a meteor shower - the weather often turns unsettled with the Perseids in August. Or all of these and something else as well? [The ornament above the horse is similar to that on Petersfield Cernunnos silver unit, ABC 686, also an Excessively Rare type]. Look at the large central sun-disk swept along by the horse’s mane. It is triply tied to a plainer disk above, as if by moonbeams, and two outside “arms” descend to other shining disks, as though lifting heavy weights. Might this represent the power of the full moon (face lit by the Sun below) that they knew would always raise very high tides – something his informants “forgot” to mention to Julius Caesar when he launched his fleet for Britain in September, 55 BC (BG 4.29)? Oh, how they must have laughed in their sleeves, and thanked the full moon, when so much of his fleet was wrecked!
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Crescents Hair. c.50-30 BC. Silver unit. 13-18mm. 1.22g.Head right with ringed-pellet eye, long pointed nose and stalk lips, beaded hairline, three rows of open crescents for hair./Triple-tailed horse left, corded mane, octopus/jellyfish motif above (formed by ringed-pellet above joined to three ringed-pellets by short lines and two longer lines between), open crescent above and in front, lyre below, beaded border. ABC 653, VA−, BMC−, S−. Good VF, huge flan of bright silver, beautifully ornamented, curious octopus motif. Unlisted by most major reference works. Easily the finest known example. EXCESSIVELY RARE only two others recorded, both badly chipped.
One of several early local issues of the Regini, this beautiful silver unit reveals important details that are missing from ABC 653 itself. We see a wide-eyed goddess, perhaps the Moon herself, with a full solar year’s worth of crescent moons for hair (you can count all twelve in ABC). It is night, and we are probably at sea. On its reverse, a Sun-horse marked as “ours” with its triple tail faces left towards tomorrow’s dawn between another pair of crescent moons: there may have been four in the original design, perhaps to signify the seasons. Plainer disks overhead may then represent full moons. With its wide, unsleeping eye (another celestial disk), the horse is restless – and in transit. We can see from ABC 653 that its feet are loosely fettered, right hind leg to left foreleg, to keep it from straying – or from rocking the boat. Because everyone knew that the sun was said to travel through the seas of night on a magical boat. Here, a large lyre symbol, conjoined with the horse’s legs, has morphed into a crescent-moon-boat with two stylized passengers or crew. Someone active then in Hampshire and West Sussex seems often to have ‘signed’ coinage with a lyre. Lyres were associated with the Sun god, and their many variant forms, including this boat and sometimes a comet, must reference different familiar tales, recited to the lyre. Our ruler may well have had major shipping interests. Very similar devices had appeared on recent Armorican coins, and these were times when prosperity depended as never before on the success of seaborne trade with newly conquered Roman Gaul. Cargo ships are expensive. Large ones to transport livestock, troops, passengers, or slaves, were more expensive still. Safety and success depended on the special skills of ships’ captains and navigators: knowing the moons and tides, reading the skies, predicting the weather. So whatever is that in the sky above, now that we can see it on this new coin? Has the emblematic lyre morphed again into something washed in from in the sea at night - an octopus or jellyfish for instance? Or is it perhaps a meteor shower - the weather often turns unsettled with the Perseids in August. Or all of these and something else as well? [The ornament above the horse is similar to that on Petersfield Cernunnos silver unit, ABC 686, also an Excessively Rare type]. Look at the large central sun-disk swept along by the horse’s mane. It is triply tied to a plainer disk above, as if by moonbeams, and two outside “arms” descend to other shining disks, as though lifting heavy weights. Might this represent the power of the full moon (face lit by the Sun below) that they knew would always raise very high tides – something his informants “forgot” to mention to Julius Caesar when he launched his fleet for Britain in September, 55 BC (BG 4.29)? Oh, how they must have laughed in their sleeves, and thanked the full moon, when so much of his fleet was wrecked!
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