I’ve been working on an art project in which I’m making wallpaper out of different paper currencies from around the world over the last 100 years. I’ve learned some interesting things:
If your money has a mythological person breaking chains–or chains are shown–then you live under an oppressive government (Zambian kwacha and North Korean won again, proving that it is the worst government in the world).
If your money has an uninspiring female monarch then you’re probably doing OK, provided you’re not a colony of said uninspiring monarch (British pound and Dutch guilder).
One of my favorite banknotes is the wholy incongruous Bolivian boliviano with the Greek god Hermes on it.
I haven’t kept any kind of record of which countries I have represented but I’d say I have 60-70 different countries. I’m missing most of the African countries and probably half of South America.
I tried to get an American Confederacy banknote but they are pretty expensive for gluing to my wall. I have money from a country I never knew existed (Transnistria) and the oldest I have is from the Russian Empire (with czar Nicholas II on it).
Why is the boliviano incongruous? Hermes was the god of commerce, having him on coins makes sense to me.
I can’t even see the picture linked in the OP, it insists in taking me to a gif in Chinese and nothing but that, and going to the root page gives me a page in Chinese - sorry but my Chinese is limited to the already-international “ni hao”. None of the pictures of boliviano notes I can find have Hermes in them.
Dunno if Kyrgyzstan is awesome. (Note: the Kyrgyzstan som feels no different from Monopoly money. Mayhap there’s a rule in there somewhere.)
A Greek god on Bolivian money seems incongruous to me (but then the American $1 has that bizarre floating eye, so what do I know?). Here’s another picture.
How do you know it’s Hermes and not Mercury? Mercury was the Roman god, and the direct cultural descendents of the Romans are the various Spanish- other Romance-speaking peoples. In other words, it’s a god from their own pre-Christian mythological tradition; who has more right to him than they do? (I grant you Bolivian culture has a lot more going on that its direct but tenuous link to Roman heritage. The gods from Bolivian indigenous religious would probably make more sense.)
pictures of the proletariat usually isn’t a good sign either such as China’s older bills. I’ll take dead communist leaders for $200, Alex, as another sign that the currency isn’t the best.
Thank you, pretty. It doesn’t seem incongrous to me, as we do consider the Romans and ancient Greeks part of what made us Hispanic: my Spanish Language classes included studying Greek roots as part of Spanish Philology. And as I said, the specific god makes perfect sense.
Dr Drake, whether you call him Hermes or Mercury, we consider them the same guy outside of actual historical/archaeological study and both cultures are in the root of ours. It isn’t even indirect (Greece -> Romans -> … -> us), there are several Ancient Greek colonies in Spain. Hari Seldon, the currency doesn’t exist any more, but back in '96 I was part of a Researchers Exchange where I got to spend some time in Göttingen. I was quite surprised that the Germans in my research group claimed not to have heard of the place, given the information I could easily find about it - but even more when I saw my first 10 DM bill! That’s Gauss, a bell curve and the Aula Magna of Universität Göttingen.
