I just want to add a little note about the aureus of Carausius pictured below.
I have had it confirmed that it is not a die duplicate of the Trau/Ashmolean specimen, although very similar. There is aso a small provenance for this coin. It first appeared, it would seem, in the Dorotheum sale number 414, 16-17 November 2011, where it was lot 304. No prior history known for this specimen.
Thursday, 2 May 2013
Monday, 22 April 2013
A "new" Carausius aureus with absolutely no provenance (sadly)
In May this year the Swiss auction house of Numismatica Ars Classica (NAC) will offer a gold aureus of the third century British usurper Carausius. The coin purports to be an output from the Rouen mint with the reverse OPES IVI AVG.
The style of the products of this mint are all rather different to the main body of coinage of this usurper from the mints in Britain and this Opes coin is decidedly crude.
The provenance they "cite" in the text is Neligen (1881) and Trau (1935), unfortunately this cannot be that coin. The weight cited for the Trau/Neligen specimen is 4.55 grammes, compared to 5.10 grammes for the NAC coin. The shape of the flan, comparing with the plate illustration in the Trau catalogue is decidedly different. Finally, to cap it all, the Trau specimen currently resides in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Looking at the piece the NAC coin does appear to be struck from the same dies as the Trau specimen, the marks in the obverse die, between the A and R in Carausius for example, are clearly visible on both specimens.
I contacted the company to try to get to the bottom of it and their reply came back as follows:
" We did not cite any provenance for the coin, the provenances are given on the line below the estimate and grading.
As you pointed out, the note refers to the Trau specimen, however by "this aureus" the writer was referring simply to the type and not to this particular piece. We can understand that the wording could have been misleading and apologise for this."
The result is that we have, if real, a totally unprovenanced new example of a rare gold coin of Carausius. Where has this coin come from, why is there no record of its discovery? Even if this fell outside of the UK laws for mandatory reporting, ie it was a single find, there needs to be a record of it.
Sunday, 17 February 2013
Agathodaemon
Hadrian, diobol from Alexandria in Egypt (Milne 1289)
The Agathodaemon is frequently portrayed in ancient art as a
serpent, however delving a little deeper shows that this is not the only
incarnation and other manifestations come to light.
Agathodaemon, or rather Agathos Daimon (meaning “good
spirit”) is part of a celestial couple with Agathe Tyche (“good fortune”) who
may both be portrayed with a polos (sometimes described as a kalathos or
modius) with a cornucopia.
Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche are not deities with
specific personalities like most of the Olympian gods but rather more generic. Pausanias
even conjectured, wrongly, that the name Agathodaemon was a mere epithet of
Zeus. He was, however, prominent in Greek folk religion and it was customary to
drink or pour out a few drops of unmixed wine to honour him in every symposium
or formal banquet.
Agathos Daimon
Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche are representations of the
demoi, the good spirit of the people and their ancestors.
Agathe Tyche
Thursday, 14 February 2013
I Feel Fine recording
This blog seeks to record modern aspects of "history" as well as the more ancient ones. In that light I offer this one. [Please click on the images for enlargements]
Sunday 18th October 1964, the recording of The Beatles song I Feel Fine took place.
Mark Lewisohn’s book reproduces the
EMI recording sheet for the session. It shows that there were 9 takes of
the song but not all of them were complete; takes 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8 marked as breakdowns and only 5, 6, and 9 as complete.
I’ve heard a number of these takes through the recordings that circulate amongst collectors:
Take 1 – With a single tracked guide vocal breaks down during the instrumental break.
Take 2 – Again with a single tracked
guide vocal breaks down during the instrumental break after a short
burst of feedback from one of the guitar amplifiers.
Take 5 – With a guide vocal is more or less complete but the ending terminates rather abruptly.
Take 6 – The instrumental riff of She's a Woman can be
heard on the tape, played on the bass, before the feedback start of I
Feel Fine is heard. The feedback is noticeably longer than on the
released version and there are no guide vocals on take 6.
Take 7 – The only part of this that
I’ve been able to hear is immediately after the take is called the
instrumental riff to Tequila is played.
Take 9 – The final and “best” take
shows that the ending on the untrimmed master tape breaks down shortly
after the “whoop whoop” that can be heard in the outro. This take is an overdub take onto a basic track (take 7 or take 8).
Once a song has been recorded the work
doesn’t stop there. The tape is multi track, in this case four track,
and each of the component tracks can be played at a different level to
create a “mix”. The log at EMI’s Abbey Road studios shows
that there were five acknowledged mono mixes done of the song, four on
Wednesday 21st October and an fifth one the next day. We know that the third mono
mix was used for the UK single and the fourth mono mix was used for the
US single. Why these two singles used different
mixes I do not know. I’ve played both and the differences are quite profound. The UK mix is very "dry" but the US mix has reverb all over it and is very echoy.
I have, in my possession, a single sided acetate disc of the song, one of the three that I know to exist. The engineer who cut the disc is recorded on the label, the GE on the right hand side standing for Geoffrey Emerick. Of the three I Feel Fine acetates that I’ve seen two are GE and the third is AB for A B Lincoln.
The time showing on the acetate label,
2:20, shows that this is a recording of take 9 but which mix is it?
Acetates are rather fragile and I haven’t played it yet. I need to set
up the computer to record it when I do play it in order to
analyse the recording. It is probably the third (UK) or fourth (US)
mono mix, however, there is an outside chance that it is one of the
unused mixes.
Saturday, 17 November 2012
Proculus, a British Museum comment on the find
Interestingly the Daily Mail published a British Museum opinion on the Proculus coin by Roger Bland today (16th November 2012):
"But coin specialist and renowned academic Roger Bland, who is Keeper of the Prehistory and Europe Department of the British Museum, disagrees that the coin is genuine.
He said:
'I don't believe any coins of Proculus were ever made and this one is probably a 15th century forgery.The only source for our knowledge of him is a controversial history book, written at the end of the 4th century AD, much of which was made up.
It says that there were 30 tyrants who all vied for control of the Roman Empire when things got a bit messy in the late 3rd century AD and lots of people were declared Emperor. Many of these 30 tyrants never had coins made, which is a sign of a true Emperor.But in the Renaissance, when coin collecting was fashionable, people thought these men should have had coins so they made them. This coin has been made from the same dye, or mould, as another in the Munich Museum, which is widely believed to be fake.There is no context to this find either - only single coins, not hoards, have been found so their provenance is difficult to assess. Unless someone finds a hoard of these coins, I'm going to remain very sceptical that there were ever any coins made for Proculus.'"
"But coin specialist and renowned academic Roger Bland, who is Keeper of the Prehistory and Europe Department of the British Museum, disagrees that the coin is genuine.
He said:
'I don't believe any coins of Proculus were ever made and this one is probably a 15th century forgery.The only source for our knowledge of him is a controversial history book, written at the end of the 4th century AD, much of which was made up.
It says that there were 30 tyrants who all vied for control of the Roman Empire when things got a bit messy in the late 3rd century AD and lots of people were declared Emperor. Many of these 30 tyrants never had coins made, which is a sign of a true Emperor.But in the Renaissance, when coin collecting was fashionable, people thought these men should have had coins so they made them. This coin has been made from the same dye, or mould, as another in the Munich Museum, which is widely believed to be fake.There is no context to this find either - only single coins, not hoards, have been found so their provenance is difficult to assess. Unless someone finds a hoard of these coins, I'm going to remain very sceptical that there were ever any coins made for Proculus.'"
Tuesday, 13 November 2012
A Proculus coin from Yorkshire
The newly discovered coin of Proculus
Just as the British soil gave us the second known coin of
the third century Gallic usurper Domitianus II five or six years ago now (and coming
from a secure archaeological context thereby confirming the authenticity of the
first specimen) now we have a new rarity from the same period.
A coin of Proculus, only the second recorded, has been
discovered by a metal detectorist on land near Stamford Bridge in North
Yorkshire. I understand that it has been properly recorded by the Yorkshire Museum in York.
Obv: IMP C PROCVLVS AVG, radiate, cuirassed bust right
Rev: VICTORIA AVG, female figure standing left, holding
wreath and sceptre
Proculus is recorded in the Historia Augusta as a short
lived usurper under the Roman emperor Probus c.280 AD, establishing himself in
Cologne after the Alemanne had invaded Gaul. When Probus moved against him he
went over to the Franks who, shortly afterwards, delivered him into the hands
of Probus.
Judging by the style of the coin it is not the product of
any of the established mints. Its crude appearance, the sketchy look and the V
on the reverse rendered as U, has more in common with the local radiate
imitations that were prevalent in the north western provinces of Europe and
Britain at the time. It might say something about the areas under the control
of Proculus.
Both known coins are apparently from the same dies, again
symptomatic of a very brief issue (compare this with the 50 obverses and 54
reverses recorded by Gilljam of the VICTORIA AVG coins of Laelian, a usurper
that survived probably three or four weeks).
The first recorded Proculus coin
The first example, from an unknown find spot, came to light in a
German auction hosted by Bankhaus Aufhauser in 1991 (lot 640, auction 8, 9-10
October 1991).
Sunday, 21 October 2012
Heroes of the Soviet Union and the crash of De Havilland Flamingo R2764
Blue plaques
[Click on photo to enlarge]
On my birthday this year we had taken the day off to go to the Roman town of Aldborough in North Yorkshire. Unfortunately the museum doesn't open on week days. Driving back home though the village of Great Ouseburn to York I noticed two blue plaques adjacent to each other. This aroused my curiosity so stopped the car to read them.They commemorate an aircraft crash from 1942, a De Haviland Flamingo, incidentally an aircraft type I had never come across. The passengers were Russian officials who had flown from the USSR to Dundee and then to London as part of a mission to link Russia with the Allies, rather than the Axis powers, prior to transporting Russian officials involved in the negotiations.
There is a very informtive website with many photographs and a presentation about the events at the link below:
Reproduced from that site is the text below but PLEASE visit the site for much more information and photographs of these events.
"A few weeks before the flight that took the USSR’s Minister of Foreign Affairs to the USA, the same crew of the PE-8, under the command of Major Asyamov, undertook a training flight from Moscow to Britain, with the aim of checking how safe it was, and whether it were really possible. It has recently come to light that the PE-8 plane also carried 2 Russian Scientists (Kasatkin & Sevastianov) and Stalin’s personal translator, Vladimir Pavlov for discussions with the British Government. It was above Great Ouseburn in Yorkshire, on 30th April 1942 there was a terrible accident that almost changed the course of WWII.
On 29th April, after flying continuously for more than 7 hours, Asyamov landed the bomber at the military airport at Tealing, a big RAF base not far from Dundee, Scotland. Immediately, the plane on a secret mission was surrounded by curious British pilots and engineers. RAF men were very interested in the Soviet PE-8, not least because the best British and American long-range planes were not up to the same technical level as the TB7, especially during the first half of WWII. The RAF didn’t have anything of the same class.
The crew was transferred to London, but their holiday there was short. The day after they arrived, the crew, in response to many requests from their British colleagues, planned to return to the military airport at Tealing to provide an excursion on the Soviet plane, and also to have a look at the new military technology being developed by the RAF in East Fortune. But only one member of the crew could fly. Pusep and Asyamov, as Pusep recalled, decided who would go on the excursion by drawing straws. Fatefully, it was Asyamov who drew the long straw. Co-pilot Pusep was to stay in London and attend the 1st May celebrations being held by the Soviet Embassy together with the Military Mission in London.
After having inspected the British aircraft at East Fortune, the DH95 Flamingo (number R2764, No. 24 Air squadron based at Hendon), and its 6 passengers, including Asyamov, gathered for the return journey to London. There were no portents of the coming tragedy. The weather forecast was for sunny and practically still weather. Following inspection and readying of the aircraft for flight, the Captain took off for London at 4.25pm. It should be noted that the captain of the British plane was one of the most experienced pilots the RAF had. At the time of the accident Pilot Officer I. Ramsay had clocked up 3755 air hours piloting different types of planes. During his career he had piloted aircraft carrying famous passengers such as Prince Bernhard, Lord Sherwood, Sir Archibald Sinclair, and Lord Louis Mountbatten. The 24th Air Squadron was reserved for undertaking internal flights and as a rule carried VIPs including members of the royal family and members of the Cabinet.
Above Yorkshire, the right engine exploded. According to the report drawn up by the commission that investigated the accident, the passengers did not manage to use any of the life-saving equipment: all the parachutes were untouched. There was no chance of survival. The aircraft fell from a height of 600 metres (2000 ft) not far from the village of Great Ouseburn, between the towns of Easingwold and Knaresborough in North Yorkshire. The blast from the stricken craft was so powerful that parts were scattered for up to 3 miles around the crash site. The joint Soviet / UK commission under Chief Inspector Vernon Drown found the following: “The cause of the accident was an internal defect in the engine, its destruction and the subsequent ignition of fuel vapour, which led to the disintegration of the wing”. According to another version: “a snapped connecting rod broke the crank case. Parts of the connecting rod and the crank case pierced the fuel tank. Inside the wing, the fuel vapour mixed with air and ignited, which blew the wing to bits.”
The four crew members of the Flamingo and all the passengers died as a result of the accident. In total, the tragedy took the lives of 10 men. They included: Major Sergei Asyamov, members of the Soviet Military Mission to the UK: Assistant to the Head of the Military Mission on Aviation issues Colonel Grigory Pugachev, Assistant Military Attache Major Boris Shvetsov, Secretary to the Military Mission Peter Baranov, Officer Francis Wilton, Officer Kenneth Edwards, Pilot Officer Iain Ramsay, Sergeant James Smith, Sergeant Alan Stripp and Engineer James Lewis.
Because of the highly secret nature of the operation, the British press did not report these tragic events at the time. No information on the crew and members of the Soviet mission could be found in the British archives or the archives of the Imperial War Museum. It is likely that these documents are still sealed away as “Secret”. There was nothing in the media about these events."
Another good site with remnants from the crash site, biographies of the occupants of the aircraft and associated photographs is:
http://www.yorkshire-aircraft.co.uk/aircraft/yorkshire/york42/r2764.html
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