The front and back of the gold coin found in southeastern England.Image credit: Courtesy Spink
Posted on 11/11/2023 11:04:07 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The rare coin was discovered in March 2023 in Hampshire county and was auctioned Sept. 28 for 20,400 British pounds ($24,720), Spink auction house said in a series of statements.
A Latin alphabetic inscription on the coin bears the name "Esunertos," which can be translated as "mighty as the god Esos," (also spelled Esus) the statements said. The name itself is Gaulish, a language commonly spoken in the region at the time, John Sills, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford's Institute of Archaeology who examined the coin before it was auctioned, told Live Science in an email.
The coin dates to sometime between 50 B.C. and 30 B.C., a time after Julius Caesar invaded Britain twice...
This coin is one of only three on record that bear the name Esunertos, Sills said. All three were found in the same region, and it's possible that the territory controlled by Esunertos included part of what is now western Hampshire, Sills noted...
Esunertos would have been one of these leaders and thus could mint his own coins, although we'll never know whether he actually called himself a "king," Leins said.
"His position was probably based on contacts, ancestry, land and/or control of resources," Leins said. "The rest is pure speculation… Was he a popular, charismatic, elected leader? Was his authority based on fear or brutality? We will almost certainly never know the answer to these questions!"
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
The front and back of the gold coin found in southeastern England.Image credit: Courtesy Spink
Sounds like he had a lot of Gaul.
Shouldn’t that be in a museum instead of private ownership?
I cannot make heads or tails of that coin, wish they had a little drawing to explain what it is? What is the wheel? Where is the name “Esunertos” and I wonder if he was a Druid?
Are you trying to Pict a fight among the Celts?
“Sounds like he had a lot of Gaul”
Actually, he was filled with Druid...
"I meant to do that."
~ Pee-Wee Herman (Pee-Wee's Pict Adventure)
Hence the saying “Ain’t worth a plugged Esunertos...”
Maybe we should get copper coins made with our name on them so in 2,000 yrs they might be worth something. Just have to figure out the corrosion problem.
😆 It DOES look like that!
The headline made me curious how Latin script made its way onto a Brittonic coin pre-Roman colonization but apparently the name inscribed is Gaulish.
Glad I could weely help!
😂. . 🙃. . 🤣. . 🤪. . 😆
lol
Looks like a windmill......So he was fighting climate change..........
“I wonder if he was a Druid?”
The writing on the coin would argue against it. The Druids didn’t write anything down. Not that they couldn’t, it appears that this was due to some belief that they held. What we know about them we get secondhand from Romans and Greeks.
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