Dear All, New beauties from the holy land Ascalon, I love these types, sorry fotos are not so great, sorry. Vespasian, Augustus(very rare) and Nero, that are a bunch all together.
word but attractive provincials! i have a more worn, and less attractive coin from the holy land...scythopolis to the north. Gordian III (238-244 AD), Nysa-Scythopolis, Decapolis Draped and cuirassed bust of Gordian III right, seen from rear, laureate / Tyche-Nysa seated on throne right, holding infant Dionysus in her arms. Delta T across fields (Dated Pompeian Era 304, AD 240/1). 24 mm, 10.7 g similar patina, made your coins made me think of mine..even if they aren't that similar otherwise.
One of the interesting things about the Ascalon types with Tyche-Astarte, like the first coin that @Cyrrhus shows is that they can be attributed to a specific year, with the date appearing below the dove on right. I made up this chart a while ago which kind of summarizes this: I wonder if this is the first coin series where each coin can be specifically dated?
Many Greek coins of the Hellenistic period were year dated but the ones I like are the Parthians with month dates. Vardanes June 43 AD Vologases IV November 152 AD The year is shown in three letters between the heads of the figures while the month name is spelled out on the very bottom line of the first and the inner bottom line on the second. I'm not sure who started year dating. Arados has year dates by the second century BC and regnal years at least a century before that. EOP = 175 = 85 BC Regnal year 15 in Phoenician letters for King Gerostratus would be about 335 BC but I'm not sure of the ID here. This fourree of Arados reads 114 (146 BC?) but I do not have a solid one to show. I had never though of this question. Who has dates earlier than Arados? Sear says they start with 174 BC and shows a tetradrachm of that date as #5988. A year set from all Arados dated series would be a lot of coins.
