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Lawrence Foster
Thank you to the folks who have read my short story "Sticky Fingers" over on the User Forum and asked about the letters "T-A-N-K" that are part of the story. I did not expect the curiosity about it to come up. So...here is a long explanation with images about that coin and another interesting (to me anyway) item from history.
That part of my story deals with some coins that my father brought back from Turkey when he was stationed there in 1958-59 (5th grade for us) on what was called a hardship tour since the family could not go with him.
When he was in Turkey he was in the field a lot as an adviser to the Turkish 3rd Army. One day a local farmer came up and had roughly 27 "coins" in a cloth bag that had been dug up when plowing fields. He offered to sell them to Dad for what was about $4.00. My mother kept them over the years and I showed them to my kids when we visited. Mom decided to give them to my daughter Becci.
In 2000 I took them to the Cinti. Art Museum because they had a "Consult the Curator" day for members. They themselves could not help me but they put me in touch with a librarian in the Classics Department at UC who was also an avid coin collector. Mike Braunlein was able to identify all the coins and gave me books to photocopy pages that documented them. Turns out that Mike is more than just an avid coin collector now. He is an international expert that the British Museum consults with on the subject.
The oldest documented coin in the collection is from 161 A.D. with Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius on it. There are a number of coins from various Roman emperors like M. Aurelius Probus (276-282), Constantius I (283-285), Constantine I, or the Great (307-337), Valentinian I (364-375), and Maurice Tiberius (582-602), and 3 Islamic coins struck in Mecca around 1334 of the Islamic calendar. (On a chart I found on Wikipedia the Islamic year 1329 corresponds with the Julian calendar year 1911. So those 3 coins are about 100 years old.)
Another coin had the Arabic number 1100 on it and was minted that year in Antioch. The T-A-N-K coin has a figure of Christ on one side and the letters with a cross on the other. The Prince of Galilee in 1099 was Tancred (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tancred,_Prince_of_Galilee) This coin was minted at the end of the first Crusade. T-A-N-K would have been the shortened version of his name Tancred. For the purposes of my short story I combined those two bit of information for one coin.
The first 3 images here are of the Crusader Era coin (obverse and reverse) and a sheet of paper showing more clearly the image. The letters T-A-N-K are on the second image.
There is one other amazing object that Dad got from that farmer besides all the coins. The last two images are the front and back of it. It is a seal made of a soft stone called steatite which is found in the Middle East and Asia Minor. The seal would be used by a somewhat wealthy owner or a majordomo when they went to market to get grain, cloth, wine, oil, or whatever. A wax glob would be put on the items and the seal would make the impression on it to show ownership and/or delivery destination. Notice that the top of the seal has a hole in it. This is for the leather strap that went through it and the person wore it on their wrist or around their neck when shopping. FYI -you are looking at the very first credit card - well, in my opinion.
Stone seals were still being used in the 1700 and 1800s in some parts of the world but not with profiles on them. Profiles were not used after the start of the 6th century, 500 A.D. But profile seals were used as early as 2500 B.C.! So, if the profile looks Egyptian, Babylonian or Sumerian then it could possibly be that old! As the museum curator told me, there is no proof that it is that old but there also is no proof that is is not that old. So, who knows?
The best way for me to close out this long post is the Paul Harvey way: Now you know the rest of the story.
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) noted that on the steatite seal the profile image could be wearing a yarmulke which is a skullcap worn by Orthodox Jewish men. So in addition to this possibly being from either Egyptian, Babylonian, or Sumerian empires it could also be Hebrew/Israelite. Great observation Anonymous Lurker! I do appreciate the insight. 
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