History Help! Artifacts...

[beauchamp]

Salaamualeikum everyone...

I have recently purchased a Jambiya (dagger) from Yemen.
On it are two gold coins with the inscription "Arenova Mos Aeno" and a plant in the middle surrounded by 5 stars.

I know nothing of latin and less about coins, but I figured this would be the place to check before I bring it in to an Antique store.

Please help!
Shokran.

[Hurin_Rules]

Salaamualeikum everyone...

I have recently purchased a Jambiya (dagger) from Yemen.
On it are two gold coins with the inscription "Arenova Mos Aeno" and a plant in the middle surrounded by 5 stars.

I know nothing of latin and less about coins, but I figured this would be the place to check before I bring it in to an Antique store.

Please help!
Shokran.

Ok, this is a tough one, as Yemeni Latin seems to be rather un-classical.

Mos and Aeno are pretty easy:

Mos is morals/customs; in the plural it is mores (which gives us the english word of the same spelling). Here Mos is clearly in the nominative: that is, it is the subject of the phrase.

Aeno appears to be from Aenus, meaning bronze/copper, or, figuratively, hard; it appears to be in the ablative case.

The hard one is Arenova. I think it is a variant spelling of Harenosus-- dropping an 'h' from a word beginning with 'a' is common in Latin, but changing an 's' to a 'v' is very unusual. If I am correct, 'Arenova' would be 'full of sand' or 'sandy', which would obviously fit well with Yemen.

So, a VERY rough and speculative translation might be something like, 'the ways of the desert are hard'.

EDIT: oops, made a big mistake: mos is masculine (I had assumed it was feminine), which throws the whole translation out of whack. I'll have to try again later.

EDIT2: Ok, think I have it now. It should be, "In the desert, the ways are hard".

[beauchamp]

Aaaaah, shokran, shokran!
I belive I have identifiyed the image on the coin as well, i think it is Siphilium, which is a fennel type plant from Cyrencia, that normally has five buds not stars. Im still searching, but that phrase has really narrowed it down. Perhaps it is from Yemen, and latin was used as a sort of bridge language or whatever.
If you want to see it, give me your email hurin and I will send a picture.
Again, Shokran!

edit: also, I looked up arenova in a latin thesaurus and found the word "Pulvis" which I belive is something like "sand" as well...

[Hurin_Rules]

If you could post the picture, that might help. Also, if you could post it in this thread, others might also be able to identify the knife by design, craftsmanship, etc.

I had assumed that you knew it was from Yemen originally, but I wondered why it would be written in Latin if it was from there. Could it perhaps be from somewhere else, such as Egypt or Libya? Cyrenaica encompasses parts of modern Egypt and Libya.

Also, one other thing: sand can also be a metaphor for the gladiatoral arena.

[beauchamp]

I know its from Yemen, the blade styling, the classic two coins are distinctly yemenite (im a bit of a weapons dork) but anyways, Ill post the best picture I have of the coin:

https://img271.imageshack.us/img271/1571/photo137gq.th.jpg (https://img271.imageshack.us/my.php?image=photo137gq.jpg)

Its possible that It could have also come from Petra or Judea when the romans owned it, and found its way into Sabean markets...