In our Wednesday Night Class on the Apocrypha we looked at I Esdras which is the Greek word for Ezra. I have a substantial collection of Samarian coins which are quite rare. Samaria of course is what the Kingdom of Israel was called after the Babylonian captivity. The Elephantine papyri are a group of writings from the Jewish mercenaries on Elephantine Island in the Nile writing to the priests in Jerusalem about 515 B.C.E. asking for permission to rebuild their temple which had been destroyed by the Egyptians while the mercenaries were away. The Egyptians objected to animal sacrifice a stable of Jewish temple worship. The mercenaries also wrote to the priests in Samaria who had been rebuffed in their attempt to participate in the Jerusalem temple rebuilding and so eventually built their own temple. I have three coins that are from this period and represent personages mentioned in the Elephantine writings and/or those from Wadi Daliyeh. The coin with the owl (copying the tetradrachmas of Athens) bear an unusually complete name of Hananyah. Quoting Meshorer and Qedar (Samarian Coinage 1999; Israel Numismatic Society, Jerusalem) "Hananyah, the governor of Samaria, is mentioned in Wadi Daliyeh papyrus nos. 7 and 9. Since we believe that the coins belong to the same period it is reasonably certain that the two Hananyahs are the same person." The other names on coins from my collection from the period are Sanballat (on the coin with the lion (shin and nun only) and Shelemyah on the stag coin. This is a critical period of Judaism when the Samarians are firmly and finally excluded from the ongoing temple cultus. It is worth noting the difference in the coinage of Samaria and Yehud (the southern Kingdom centered around Jerusalem and so named on its coins). The Samarians have images that would be entirely inappropriate to those in Jerusalem such as this temple boy holding his phallus and displaying what is probably a bird, the price for his favors. Of course the northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians 722/21 BCE while the southern kingdom did not fall to the Babylonians until 587/6. Thus the northern kingdom had 135 more years of cultural assimilation than did the southern kingdom.
Yes. There is a Samarian coin like this with a different inscription between the king and lion and a different inscription over the ship instead of a date. The best source for identifying those Sidonian coins is very hard to find but here it is. It is about an inch and a quarter thick and in French.
I have this Samarian "owl": It is tiny at 9-8 mm and 0.78 grams. His has a helmeted head of Athena right and an owl with outspread wings (like the Athenian decadrachms) and two letters which are transliterated as SN. Meshorer & Qedar Samarian Coinage 87. Meshorer &Qedar The Coinage of Samaria in the Fourth Century BCE 92. M&Q think Samarian coinage began c. 372 BCE and ended with the conquests of Alexander the Great c. 333/2 BCE.
Meshorer & Qedar 159. I have about 10 Shomron obols, about twice as many Philistia. Vast majority of Shomron coins are coming from a small area near Shhem, Philistia and Yehud were more widely distributed.
Here is Meshorer & Qedar 150 I got years ago from CNG, actually looks way better in hand: Below is uncleaned but nice Meshorer & Qedar 126. This type is actually different from other Shomron coins. Their average weight is way lower than obol standard used both in Shomron and Philistia, and too high for hemiobol but matches exactly gera standard of Yehud coins. Based on this argument and letter Y in the right field Yigal Ronen proposed re-attribution of this type to Yehud. I tend to agree with him, all examples I have seen since his publication are indeed closer to gera than anything else. Most of my obols are not next to me so I can't take more pictures right now, if I don't forget I will take some when opportunity comes.
