Posted 08/20/2014 7:48 pm
The correct identification of Ethiopian coins of Heile Selassie has been thrown into confusion in recent decades, because some of the Krause pictures are or have been wrong. These errors have propagated through anyone relying on picture-matching Krause as their primary source for coin IDs.
The writing below the lion is the denomination, written out in full. Unlike most other Semitic languages, Amharic is written left-to-right like English. The Amharic script is complex by Western standards, with each letter combining consonant with the following vowel. The four letters to the right of the colon-shaped word separator symbol are the name of the denomination, "santim" (spelled "Sa N Ti Me™"). The letters to the left of this spell out the number, in this case, the word is "asr" (spelled "Ê"a S Re™"), or the number 10. I believe Krause currently has this picture correct, since the NGC entry for this coin is also currently correct. However, the WCG entry for this same coin shows the wrong picture.
The writing below the lion is the denomination, written out in full. Unlike most other Semitic languages, Amharic is written left-to-right like English. The Amharic script is complex by Western standards, with each letter combining consonant with the following vowel. The four letters to the right of the colon-shaped word separator symbol are the name of the denomination, "santim" (spelled "Sa N Ti Me™"). The letters to the left of this spell out the number, in this case, the word is "asr" (spelled "Ê"a S Re™"), or the number 10. I believe Krause currently has this picture correct, since the NGC entry for this coin is also currently correct. However, the WCG entry for this same coin shows the wrong picture.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
