ON THE READING OF THE COINS OF CUNOBELIN.
No 1. |
No. 2. | |
| COINS OF CUNOBELIN, FOUND AT CHESTERFORD. | ||
When upon a former occasion an inspection of the coins of Cunobelin had led me to enunciate a theory relative to the meaning of the obscure word Tascio or Tasciovani, upon the reverse, I was not insensible that the novel idea suggested by the reading of these legends would be a subject for discussion. The newly discovered coins represented above, found at Chesterford, and now in the possession of the Hon. Richard Neville, who has kindly communicated them to the Archæological Institute, however, settle the question, and support in a gratifying and unexpected manner the conjecture upon which Mr. Wigan's specimen, owing to the indifferent preservation of the last letters, threw a slight doubt: the most sceptical cannot now fail to be convinced that TASC. FIL is Tasciovani filius, and that through this name a clue is obtained for the decipherment of the inscriptions of several other coins of the British and the Gallic series.
I should have considered it unnecessary to retrace my steps upon this numismatic point, but that a recent writer, the Rev. Mr. Beale Post, has not only disputed my explanation of the legend, but actually proposed another far more untenable. Forced to abandon the crude conjectures of the past school of antiquaries, he has taken up a position founded upon the same imperfect philological basis, and consequently equally wrong, and he cannot therefore be surprised if numismatists do not recognise in CVNOBELINVS TASC • FIL •, Cunobelin the Tasciovanus the Fercombretus.
In order to place the question in as concise a form as possible, it will be necessary to re-describe the four coins on which it is founded.
No. 1. CVNO in a square, or on a tessera; all within a laurel wreath and engrailed ring.
℞. TASC • F. Pegasus galloping to the r. Ar. 1. British Museum[1].
- ↑ Engraved and described in the Numismatic Chronicle, vol. vii. Pl. V. No. 1. p. 78.
