ANCIENT GREEK "COIN" FOUND IN ILLINOIS IN 1882

While on a trip East to attend a destination wedding, I stopped at an antique mall and bought a copy of The Books of Charles Fort. These are a compilation of unexplainable events written in a unique style. On p. 149 of The Book of the Damned, Fort mentions the discovery of "a curious bronze coin" attributed by Prof. F.F. Hilder of St. Louis to Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria, 175-164 B.C., on a farm in Cass County, Illinois, in 1882. There is a description. Fort's source for this item is the Scientific American for June 17, 1882, p. 382. The story was also picked up by a number of newspapers, among them the Alexandria Gazette (of Virginia) for Aug. 1, 1882, p. 4.

Now there are several explanations for this discovery:

(1) the Seleucids discovered America before Columbus, and penetrated as far as Illinois.

(2) One of the U.S.'s early collectors of ancient coins took up farming in Illinois and lost it there.

(3) It's a copy.

Surely the last explanation is correct. As noted in the Scientific American story, Antiochus IV is mentioned in the first book of Maccabees, chapter 1, verse 10, "as a cruel persecutor of the Jews." In the latter part of the 19th century, salesmen for large family Bibles sometimes offered replicas of ancient coins (illustrated in the Bible) as premiums, and such copies have turned up in odd places to bedevil researchers. I have not seen a reference to coins of Antiochus IV being imitated, however.

Reader comments invited!

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Wayne Homren, Editor

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