My Tiny Boss-Lady™ woke up early this morning clamoring for a bottle of milk, after which I sat down to go through a backlog of old emails. You know how you sometimes skim an email and leave it marked “Unread” or otherwise flag it, to go back to later for a more in-depth reading? I had a couple issues of The E-Sylum from December that I finally circled back to this morning. Normally I read every weekly issue from top to bottom within a day or so of receiving it (often when it first arrives), but the holiday season always brings extra competition for time and attention. My advice to fellow E-Sylumophiles is this: If you’ve set an issue aside to go back to later—definitely get back to it! You’re guaranteed to find something (or many things) of interest: entertaining stories, valuable news, updates on ongoing research, new book announcements, and more.

I’m trying to reach Jim Powell. He sent me a letter, and I must contact him about his order. He added a printout from The E-Sylum, so I assume he gets it via email.

On the piece about which you inquired, the very fact that it is provided with a false provenance is evidence sufficient to hold that the piece itself is one of Ford's inventions. Not only did Ford manufacture many fakes, most excitingly in gold -- the pretended Mexico ingots of the 1740's, and the raft of fake Western American ingots -- he was also a great story-teller, writing fictitious histories about his fakes to impress his unknowing customers, like Clifford. John Kleeberg and I revealed much of what Ford had been up to in our earlier website, How the West was Faked.

This falls under the category of numismatic authors who aspire to be painters. What numismatic author painted the attached image? Can you name any other numismatic authors who were painters?

I'm interested in early dated coins - Robert Levinson's "The Early Dated Coins of Europe 1234-1500" is a particular favorite in my numismatic library - so I find the present discussion on Arabic numerals fascinating. (I would be interested in an "early dated coinage" book concentrating on coins with Arabic numerals. Levinson's book, fascinating as it is, by its nature includes coins using Roman numerals, but from an aesthetic standpoint I prefer "1486" over "MCCCCLXXXVI." But I digress.)

Am I correct to infer from John Lupia's comment...

"Dionysius Exiguus, a monk, circa 525/7 calculated the birth of Christ to A.U.C. 753 on the Roman calendar. Many credit the use of Exiguus’ calculations to the Venerable Bede, an English historian writing in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. Consequently, it is from the 8th century on we begin to find the Exiguus system used. This is where, in the West, we receive the date today since it was adopted in the Gregorian calendar in 1582."

... that, for example, people living in the 600s did not know they were living in that time, and that it wasn't until the 700s that people knew they were living in the 700s (in the sense that we know we're living in the 2000s)?

The only thing I would add is that in the past generally, societies would reckon time in regnal years. For example, the third year of King so and so.