Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part II. For the year 1758.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.Various
History
Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part II. For the year 1758.: Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.
Various
Science -- Periodicals
1. From this table it plainly appears, that the people of Sidon had
no particular character to denote Five, whilst the Phœnician numerals
here explained were in vogue amongst them; that they expressed TWENTY
by a character, during that period, not very different from the
correspondent one used at Tadmor; and that in all other respects the
Phœnician notation then prevailing at Sidon was, in a manner, the same
with that of the[210] Palmyrenes.
2. It may not be improper to observe, that two of the Sidonian coins I
have been considering[211] exhibit the Phœnician word מא, equivalent
to the Hebrew מאה, and Syriac מאא, AN HUNDRED, instead of the centenary
numeral character. This, in conjunction with the appearance of that
character, occupying the very place of the term אמ, on others of those
coins, first induced me to believe, that the inscription preserved by
every one of them in the exergue could be nothing else but a date.
3. I shall beg leave farther to remark, that none of the indubitable
medals of Tyre, adorned with Phœnician letters, as far as I have been
able to discover, present to our view any Phœnician dates at all.
This still more clearly evinces the second element prefixed to the
Phœnician numerals in the exergue to point out to us the city of Sidon,
and not that of Tyre; which[212], indeed, seems already to have been
sufficiently proved.
4. From the foregoing observations we may likewise collect, that
the coin assigned to Demetrius III. by Mr. Masson, F. Frœlich[213],
and Sig. Haym, exhibiting a Phœnician legend, without a Phœnician
date, in the exergue, ought in reality to be attributed to Demetrius
I. Those three learned men therefore have been guilty of a mistake in
this particular. Nor can the head on this medal be denied to bear some
resemblance to that of Demetrius I.[214] with a moderate beard, as it
appears on a coin published by Dr. Vaillant, and in one of F. Frœlich’s
plates. That the letters A K, behind the head, indicate the piece
to have been struck in the twenty-first year of the proper Sidonian
æra[215], as Mr. Masson and F. Frœlich are pleased to assert, can never
be proved. On the contrary, the improbability of such a notion may be
inferred from two similar letters, behind the turrited head of the _Dea
Syria_[216], on a Phœnician coin, which Mr. Masson makes to point out
the forty-first year of the proper epoch of Sidon; whereas, in truth,
that piece seems to have been struck either in the reign of Demetrius
I. or Antiochus IV.[217] many years before. Nay, that it was actually
struck when Demetrius I. sat upon the Syrian throne, is rendered almost
incontestable by a medal of that prince now in my possession, with a
_Beta_ behind the head on the anterior part, and the very reverse of
the last-mentioned coin. From the former of which circumstances it
farther appears, that the alphabetic characters MA, supposed by Mr.
Masson to denote 41, are by no means to be taken for a date. To which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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