Not the most beautiful coin but fascinating from an historical perspective... ...this coin seems to depict the golden eagle which Herod erected over the entrance to the Jewish Temple. The eagle caused an uproar among the Jews who saw it as a graven image.
Herod has always struck me as a hellenistic king who probably would have fully embraced the Greek lifestyle if it wasn't for the need to appease the large portion of his constituency that was fanatically Jewish. I read a biography of M. Agrippa, and apparently him and Agrippa were the best of buddies and loved to visit each other often (always outside Jerusalem though so they could entertain each other in proper hellenistic or Roman fashion without ticking off Herod's rather conservative subjects). Still, for all his unconventional lifestyle, Herod did at least care enough about other Jews to persuade Agrippa to defend Jews in Greece from abuse and persecution from local city councils, which were imprisoning Jews for paying taxes for the upkeep of the temple in Jerusalem before paying any city taxes. Agrippa, thanks to Herod, got Augustus to rule that local councils had to allow Jews to pay the temple tax first, and could only collect taxes from them on the difference between the temple tax and their tax. To give a rough example of how this would have worked, if the local tax was 15% but the Jewish temple tax was 10%, local city councils could only keep 5% tax from their Jewish subjects, and had to give the rest to the Jewish authorities in charge of collecting the temple tax. If the city failed to do that, it could be fined double the money owed by the Roman senate, and the fine would be turned over to the Jewish authorities.
As always, a great coin and an excellent thread by @Deacon Ray! Here goes mine, not so good as yours... Bronze lepton, Hendin 1190, Meshorer 23, RPC I 4909, 0.79g, 12.7mm, Jerusalem mint, obverse HRWD BASIL, cornucopia; reverse eagle standing
Thanks for posting your Herod eagle lepton, @Multatuli ! These often go unnoticed when they get mixed up in lots of lepta and prutot and are rather rare by comparison to other coins from Herod's reign.
