{"id":61,"date":"2010-09-10T18:26:12","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T18:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.detecting.org.uk\/blog\/?p=61"},"modified":"2010-09-10T18:45:09","modified_gmt":"2010-09-10T18:45:09","slug":"earliest-know-sighting-of-halleys-comet-comets-and-meteors-on-ancient-greek-and-roman-coins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.detecting.org.uk\/blog\/2010\/09\/earliest-know-sighting-of-halleys-comet-comets-and-meteors-on-ancient-greek-and-roman-coins\/","title":{"rendered":"Earliest Known Sighting of Halley’s Comet – Comets and Meteors on Ancient Greek and Roman Coins"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/science-environment-11255168<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems the ancient greeks spotted Halley’s comet in 466BC.<\/p>\n

This got me thinking about ancient greek and roman coins that depict comets or meteorites (or at least appear to depict a comet or meteorite). There are more than a few of them, but wasn’t there a very rare ancient greek silver coin minted sometime in the fifth century BC that depicted a “meteorite”? I wonder if the coin was really commemorating the appearance of the Halley’s comet?<\/p>\n

I have been searching around the web trying to find pictures of it and some more details, but so far it has eluded me. Trying to remember the details of this is doubly frustating because I am pretty sure I recently saw one of these coins for sale on ebay.com.<\/p>\n

I guess I might be thinking of the Armenian king Tigranes the Great, who produced a coin depicting what is believed to be Halley’s Comet in 87BC.<\/p>\n

Did anybody out there see a greek coin depicting a comet or meteorite on ebay in the last few weeks?<\/p>\n

See this link<\/a> for more ancient coins that depict comets and meteorites.<\/p>\n

The ancient greeks are believed to have worshipped meteorites and kept them in their temples. Until recently The Black Stone of Paphos, a large dark coloured stone found at The Temple of Aphrodite in Paphos, Cyprus, was believed to be a meteorite.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/science-environment-11255168 It seems the ancient greeks spotted Halley’s comet in 466BC. This got me thinking about ancient greek and roman coins that depict comets or meteorites (or at least appear to depict a comet or meteorite). There are more than a few of them, but wasn’t there a very rare ancient greek silver coin minted … Continue reading Earliest Known Sighting of Halley’s Comet – Comets and Meteors on Ancient Greek and Roman Coins<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99,63,98],"tags":[100,65,104,101,105,103,102,53,106],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greek-coins","category-coin-collecting","category-roman-coins","tag-ancient","tag-coins","tag-comet","tag-greek","tag-halleys","tag-meteor","tag-meteorite","tag-roman","tag-tigranes-the-great"],"yoast_head":"\nEarliest Known Sighting of Halley's Comet - Comets and Meteors on Ancient Greek and Roman Coins<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Earliest Known Sighting of Halley's Comet - Comets and Meteors on Ancient Greek and Roman Coins\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.detecting.org.uk\/blog\/2010\/09\/earliest-know-sighting-of-halleys-comet-comets-and-meteors-on-ancient-greek-and-roman-coins\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Earliest Known Sighting of Halley's Comet - 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