Posted on 01/29/2005 5:10:32 AM PST by MississippiMasterpiece
Colorado Springs, CO (PRWEB) January 28, 2005 -- After decades of seeking possible answers about a mysterious UFO-like design on a 17th century French copper coin, a prominent numismatic expert says it remains just that: an unidentified flying object. After a half-century of research, the design has defied positive identification by the numismatic community.
"It was made in the 1680s in France and the design on one side certainly looks like it could be a flying saucer in the clouds over the countryside," said Kenneth E. Bressett of Colorado Springs, Colorado, a former President of the 32,000-member American Numismatic Association and owner of the curious coin.
"Is it supposed to be a UFO of some sort, or a symbolic representation of the Biblical Ezekiel's wheel? After 50 years of searching, I've heard of only one other example of it, and nothing to explain the unusual design."
Bressett said the mysterious piece is not really a coin, but a "jeton," a coin-like educational tool that was commonly used to help people count money, or sometimes used as a money substitute for playing games. It is about the size of a U.S. quarter-dollar and similar to thousands of other jetons with different religious and educational designs that were produced and used in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries.
"The design on this particular piece could be interpreted as showing either a UFO or Ezekiel's wheel, but little else. Some people think the Old Testament reference to Ezekiel's wheel may actually be a description of a long-ago UFO," he explained.
"The legend written in Latin around the rim is also mystifying. 'OPPORTUNUS ADEST' translates as 'It is here at an opportune time.' Is the object in the sky symbolic of needed rainfall, or a Biblical reference or visitors from beyond? We probably will never know for certain," said Bressett.
"It is part of the lure of numismatics that makes coin collecting so intriguing."
You are just making that up!
The latin words for "pray" are intecedor, peto, posco,adoro, oro, and supplico.
The latin for "to multiply" is "multiplico, cresco or augeor"
Haes means "fixed in place, lingering, clinging (like velcro)" from the verb haereo.
Auctor means "creator, maker, father"
Colam means "to a place called Cola, or a coloring, or to a place He has designed".
How did you make that translation, anyway? You should use a LOL tag when you're joking around.
A coke inspired song if there ever was one. I always wondered what the hell it was about.
It's the hubcap from a 1678 citroen.
So, maybe you weren't joking, but I still can't figure out where you got "multiply"...
Didn't Nostradamus predict this in a quatrain:
"The penis in an alien wheel,
flies through the clouds,
and brings rain to France,
Or God is simply having a little joke, mes amis.
I read that as "haec" as in "hic, haec, hoc". I have no Latin dictionary here and my schoollatin is very rusty. "Auctare" means to "rise steadily" or "make money". That's where I got the multiply from. I can blame that on the language barrier :)
And I think my "translation" makes more sense than yours.
Auctare is the frequentativum to augere. Like in rising again and again and again...
That looks like a sun dial upside down.
I think i totally 0wned demoRat watcher with my translation ;)
Quae familia hodie quoque, Constantine maxime, nobilissima est et per te aucta et augenda...
Maybe you're right - that's still along what I figured out the sentence means. I give demorat watcher an "F" for his creative translation.
Would you please translate?
Also this family today, great Constantine, a most noble one, has benefited and prospered through you...
The important thing is that the caluse "per te aucta" is used regularly in Latin to mean "prospered through you" and pften addrseed to the ruler (or to a deity).
"We pees upon your seely flowairs"
Perhaps this is a representation of the wheel of fortune; seize opportunity when the wheel turns your way. Would expect to see Fortuna Major somewhere turning the wheel tho.
Or, could it suggest the action of Jupiter Pluvius, or Jupiter Tonans sending rain upon the earth? It would suggest a shield rather than a wheel and the center axel or shaft representing a phallus? Sky father, earth mother? On one side the clouds are gathering, on the other the rain falls on a tree or plant, life, growth, fecundity?
Perhaps the 16 divisions on the wheel represent the constellations and this is some kind of agrarian planting calander (At one time there were more than 12 constellations in the zodiac--no idea of the number in france when this was minted.) I
Could also be a clock with 1 hand divided into 16 periods. Since time was tracked by the passage of the zodiac signs perhaps there was a time in France that they used a 16 hour clock?
Also, cant rule out that the minter created a design that was so unintelligible and unrelated to whatever his subject was that neither his audiance at the time nor scholars in the present can make sense of it. Could have been as obscure to them as us.
fyi
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