Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstra43441905roya).pdf/327

 On a Second Collection of Coins from Malacca.

In a former number of this Journal I described a col- lection of coins which in the year 1900 had been obtained during excavations near the mouth of the Malacca river, and which had been collected together by the Hon'ble W. Egerton, Resi- dent Councillor of Malacca, and presented by him to the Raffles Museum. The most interesting of these, previously not describ- ed, were certain Portuguese tin coins from the time of King Emmanuel (1495-1521) and John III (1521-1557), the earliest of which must have been struck by Albuquerque soon after his occupation of Malacca (1511). Towards the end of last year (1904) the Hon'ble R. N. Bland, Resident Councillor of Malacca, succeeded in obtaining more coins from the same locality which he generously presented to the Raffles Museum. He tells me that the dredger brought them up imbedded in a kind of blue clay, possibly a little to the sea-ward of the place where Mr. Egerton's were found.

The most remarkable of these are six huge tin coins, struck in two varieties, giving neither the date nor the name of a ruler, but having a pattern similar to that of the coins issued by King Emmanuel and John III,, namely with the cross on the ob- verse and the sphere on the reverse. The one variety (see figs. 1 and la), of which there are five specimens, measures from 35 to 36 mm. in diameter, 6 mm. in thickness and weighs from 37 to 115 grammes. On the obverse, around the cross, is the inscrip- tion NOSTRE SPES VNICA CRVX XPI. The mistake in NOSTRE is very extraordinary, but such errors are not uncom-