174 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT 



seen on Syrian coins, as for instance on a drachma of Anti- 

 ochus III (Fig. 2) where there appears a remarkably bold 

 and well-executed elephant, with fine long tusks. A rude 

 production of North African silver coinage, from the time 

 of Juba I, King of Numidia (60-46 B. C), gives a curiously 

 archaic portrayal of an elephant in motion (Fig. 7). On 

 the other hand, the elephant in repose is effectively figured 

 on an Etruscan copper coin (Fig. 21), and a specimen of the 

 copper coinage of Juba I (Fig. 22) offers an exceedingly life- 

 like elephant type, in marked contrast 

 with the archaic silver coin noted above, 

 which may have been intended to re- 

 produce old Punic models. 



A number of types of coins bearing 

 representations of the elephant are in- 

 scribed with the name of Julius Csesar; on 

 some of these Caesar's head is stamped on 

 the obverse, while on others only the 

 letters of his name appear. The French 

 critic Joubert hazarded the conjecture 

 that certain at least of this latter type 

 were struck while Caesar, still a private 

 citizen, could not have his image on 

 the coins, and that as in the Mauritanian tongue the 

 name of the elephant was ccesar, this animal's figure served 

 as a kind of hieroglyph or rebus. There may perhaps be 

 some truth in this conjecture, and the frequent appearance 

 of the elephant on coins of the later Caesars might be ex- 

 plained as at once due to the free use of this form on Julius 

 Caesar's coins, and to the assimilation of the Mauritanian 

 coBsar (elephant) with the name of the greatest and most 

 ambitious of the Romans, a name that since his time has 

 been the favourite designation of imperial dignity.* 



*Gisberti Cuperi, "De elephantis in nummis obviis," Hagse Comitmn, 1719, col. 163; 

 citing Joubert's "De la science des medailles," Chap. V, 



Medal of Maxen- 

 Tius, depicting the em- 

 peror standing in a car 

 drawn by four elephants 

 and receiving a crown and 

 palm branch borne to him 

 through the air by a 

 winged victory. 



