Among the debris were clusters of silver rupees, still in the shape of the bags that had once carried them. As they swam over one of the massive coral heads, the remains of a shipwreck came into view, scattered along the bottom. In 1961, his dive partner and underwater photographer, Mike Wilson, was exploring Great Basses Reef along with two boys from the American consulate.
He was an avid scuba diver and often wrote about underwater exploration along with his science papers and science fiction stories. But few know about his life before “2001: A Space Odyssey."īy about 1956, Clarke had tired of the English weather and adopted the tropical Ceylon (as it was known back then) as his new home. Most people know Clarke as the Nobel-nominated “father of satellite communications,” and the author of “2001: A Space Odyssey” among nearly 100 other books. Until the Great Basses discovery, no other examples of these coins were known to exist.
TAJ MAHAL COLLECTION PLANNER STUDIO C FULL
Flowing across the obverse, just below the date, is the poetic couplet “Shah Aurangzeb Alamgir, the ruler, throne adorner, world grasper, struck coin in the world like the shining full Moon.”įurther translation indicated that the coins had been minted in Surat, India, in the Hijri year AH 1113, or the latter part and beginning of the Gregorian years 17, during the 45th and 46th regnal years of Emperor Aurangzeb. Buried among the debris were concreted masses of silver rupees. Clarke, and his dive associates recovered the treasure on the treacherous Great Basses Reef. In 1961, the remains of the shipwreck was discovered, and in 1963, Sir Arthur C. And it is doubtful Aurangzeb ever missed his rupees. Those waiting for her return to Surat never left any record of the loss. On its way to the East, the trader probably put in at the Portuguese trading post on the tiny island of Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka), but disaster struck as it continued on its voyage around the southern tip of the island. Aurangzeb was the son of Shah Jahan, builder of the most magnificent memorial in the world: the sun-white, glistening, marble towered Taj Mahal, built as a memorial to his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The rupees had been minted by order of Shah Aurangzeb Alamgir (1618-1707), the sixth and last great Mughal (Mogul) emperor of India. Just over three hundred years ago, an Indian trader sailed from the bustling port of Surat, India, bound for the Far East via “the Spice Route.” She carried a treasure to satiate desire: bag after bag, containing 1,000 coins each, of exquisitely minted silver rupees.
Coins "Like the Shining Full Moon in the World"
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