Caracalla Tetradrachm from Aelia Capitolina

I have a Jersualem Heraclius Solidus, which was relatively cheap back in the day due to a finder's gash (luckily on the first part of the obverse legend only), but it's in storage and it's not photographed. I got it fromSphinx or Pegasi (I get the two mixed up) at a coin show. I think it was the latter. IIRC Pegasi had flipped the coin from Jon Kern.

That Leu follis is really neat.

 

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Here is an Antoninus Pius bronze

13 gm, 24mm; laureate draped and cuirassed bust of A Pius right; IMP ANTONINVS AVG PP P; Tyche standing left resting foot on ???, holding bust and long sceptre, all within tetrastyle temple; CAC in exergue. Ref Meshorer 20, Rosenberger 10. I don't have either one of these references but I guess that the reverse legend is short for Colonia Aelia Capitolina.

I would be interested to hear whether anyone knows if the temple represented on the coin refers to an actual structure - by this time the Romans must have rebuilt a good portion of the city.

 

In fact this is not a temple, it represents the niche which was in the interior of a temple and was its focal point, the most sacred place. These niches were set in an architectural frame with double columns with smaller niches and statues between them and an arched pediment at the top. The niche contained the statue of the Tyche.

In Syria some Roman temples with similar niches were preserved in the 19th c. well enough to be photographed and drawn. For example the "Tychaion" (temple of Tyche) of as-Sanamayn in South Syria :


Reconstructed plan of the Tychaion at as-Sanamayn

Façade (note the two niches flanking the monumental door) and inside view of the Tychaion, restored elevations by Howard Crosby Butler (1909). The dotted blocks are those Butler actually saw on the spot, the white ones are restitutions.

Not far from there at Mismiyyeh, South Syria, there was in the 19th c. another temple which has been destroyed since to build barracks for the Ottoman garrison. Here is an old photograph of its façade, you may recognise the two niches flanking the monumental doorway :


19th c. photo of a Roman temple in Mismiyyeh, Syria

Same kind of niche in Shaqqa (South Syria too), flanking the monumental entrance of the temple:


It is likely that in Aelia Capitolina too, like in almost every city in the whole region, there was a similar temple dedicated to the local Tyche. It was probably constructed following more or less the same model as all other temples of Tyche in the region.

These framed and decorated niches containing the statue were the focal point of the temple. It is why they are depicted on coins more often than the façade of the temple on the profane street. There was the same kind of focal niche flanked by columns in the synagogue of Dura Europos (3rd c. AD); of course the Jews did not put a statue in it, but probably the Torah. These niches were so sacred that they were adopted by Muslims: in mosques they are called mirhab and the people pray in their direction which is supposed to be the direction of the Kaaba.


Mirhab of the Ibn Tulun mosque, Cairo.

 

TTerrier, Pictured below is another bronze coin that sold at CNG Triton XXV, lot 5275 as just described by GenoLR.


Aelia Capitolina (Jerusalem). Elagabalus, AD 218-222. AE 25 mm, 10.04 gm, 1 h. Meshorer, Aelia 125. Ex Kenneth S. Abramowitz Collection.

 

nero., I'm guessing your Heraclius solidus looks like the coin pictured below, Sear 852. There is another similar solidus, Sear 851, that has an exergual line below the two busts. For a long time these coins were thought to be minted in Jerusalem, but that is no longer the case. Today most experts believe these solidi were made by a military mint traveling with Heraclius.