Wonder why the Moderators do not enforce a "no Politics, Religions etc" code for this Thread (Ancient, Greek, and Roman Coins)?
The coinage of the Macedonian kingdom is classed by Numismatists into the Greek coinage category.
Have a look at where Wild Winds puts the coinage of the Macedonian kingdom:
http://wildwinds.com/coins/greece/i.htmlI'm Armenian. Wild Winds has the coinage of the Artaxiad dynasty (Tigranes II, III & IV) in the Greek Coinage section.
Am I fuming?
No.
Because the culture of Hellenism brought in the wake of Alexander III meant that all nations within his sphere would adhere to some form of "Greek" style.
Since Alexander III was tutored by Aristotle from 356 - 323 BCE he would have thought of himself as a Greek.
If he thought of himself as a Macedonian he would never have paid homage at the tomb of the Greek warrior, Achilles, at Troy.
Instead he would probably have demolished it and probably set out to kill all Greeks.
He was capable of doing that, he wiped out or deported many tribes and nations in his conquest.
But he thought of himself as a Greek as the ancient sources, of various origins, attest.
That is why the era is called the "Hellenistic age" and not the "Macedonian age".
Wikipedia has ancient Macedonian in various categories, but not South Slavic (obviously), which is the language group modern Macedonian belongs to.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancien...assificationBulgarian nationalists tried to make out the modern Macedonian language was just a "dialect" of Bulgarian but it is distinct from it but like Bulgarian, belongs to the "South Slavic" language group.
Could I say that modern Armenian is the same as the Armenian spoken by the Artaxiad kings?
No.
In those 2000 years, a lot of changes have occured, Hellenism, Persia and the Turkish invasions have all left their trace on the Armenian language.
But a scholar in Medieval Armenian, if they had the chance to "go back in time" and speak to a member of the Artaxiad royal court if not the Kings, might be able to understand some words if not all.
The Armenian peoples have had a presence in that region since the time of king Tigranes II and a living history in oral traditions and written accounts.
Could a scholar of "Medieval Macedonian", if they had the chance to time travel back to the royal court of Alexander III, be able to understand any words bearing a direct link to modern Macedonian, which is thought to either have been related to Thracian, Aetolian or Illyrian?
It comes to the question of language and people.
Most of the peoples of the modern Turkish Republic can trace an ancestry that has anything but Turkoman in it.
They could find Albanian, Bosnian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Armenian, Assyrian, Georgian, Arab, Kurdish, Jewish, all peoples who have lived in that land, known in antiquity as "Asia Minor" and in medieval times as "Anatolia".
But becuase Turkish became the common language of the peoples there under the various Turkoman rule, including into the Ottoman era, and became the official language of the Turkish Republic, if they are Sunni Muslim and speak Turkish then they will only consider themselves as Turks.
But they are not Turkmen, they bear no resemblance to the Altaic Turkmen, such as the Uygurs of western China.
Only a vague link in language.
So certainly the people of the modern Republic of Macedonia could have a connection to the peoples who lived in the region in ancient times. But the language they speak today is of a different Indo-European language branch to the ones spoken in that region in ancient times.
If someone is insulting a person, an ethnic group or a race, the Moderators must take action, that is what they got the position for.
But the original poster was asking, casually, about buying some Greek coins, such as of the phil-Hellen, Alexander III.
In that original post he made no statements of a "anti Republic of Macedonia" nature.
There are other online Forums for purely historical debates, this is not such a Forum, this is just a Thread on "Ancient, Greek, and Roman Coins".
to the community
Posted 08/11/2014 09:01 am
