I was attracted to this common prutah of Herod Archelaus by the baroque shape and the exceptionally well spiked ram on the obverse prow. The shape is mostly due to the coin retaining sprues from the flan casting process. It remains an ugly coin. The reverse legend EthN for Ethnarch is relatively clear but the obverse HPW (Herod) is weak.
Galley prows are cool! I have not seen it, but a collector friend told me the new 300 Movie has a lot ship battle action. I wonder if there is some triple pointed battering ram action. Cool cool coin!
The untrimmed sprues don't bother me and the details are better than the vast majority of Herod prutot. Looks like a win to me.
Wow => very cool lil' sprue-coin!! Ummm, it is a bit difficult to estimate its diameter and weight (do you have its stats handy, or is it already in your safety box?)
They're usually around 14mm, between 1 and 1.5g, and actually, they don't come much better than that. The details on that coin are quite excellent for the series.
Weight is not a problem. 2.10g. Diameter is 20mm from point to point and 13mm across the shortest route. There is no way I would have bought this were it not for the sprues. I have no particular interest in Judaean coins so something as uninspiring as this has to get in on technical oddities. My family always liked to find shapes in clouds. Looking at the reverse orientation of this coin I see a yellow tang (with very poor colors).
Thanks Doug ... yes, the sprues make it ultra special (and yah, it does kinda remind me of a fish as well ... good pick-up)
I used to keep marine aquariums and had yellow tangs at one point. Very territorial little buggers - you had to be careful what you combined them with, and never more than one per hundred gallons. The hobby just got to be too expensive (as if coin collecting was a solution to that, lol).
Judaean, punchmarked Indian and Spanish cobs are all collectible by shape if you are just a bit different from the collecting norm.
Yes, and you get more detail on the larger, irregular flans. If you insist on round Judaean coins, more often than not, much of the designs are off-flan. Is that prutah an issue of Alexander Jannaeus? I'm not strong on identifying these.
I agree its a well above average prow. As these coins go, its well above average for strike. They are somewhat interesting, more so if you own and read Hendin, but still these would be at the bottom of nearly every dealers junk boxes if it were not for the geography and timeframe they are made. They are one of my favorite ancients to give away to people who's only knowledge of ancient history is what is in the bible.
Archelaus is actually mentioned by name in the Bible. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee to Egypt, but eventually Joseph receives a dream in which an angel tells him to return to Israel. Matthew 2:22
It's also possible that Luke's account of the parable of the talents refers obliquely to Archelaus. Luke 19:12-14 According to Josephus, when Herod the Great died, Archelaus quelled a popular uprising by the massacre of 3000 Judaean citizens. He promptly sailed to Rome to secure the approval of his kingship from Caesar Augustus. Herod Antipas fought the petition, but Augustus eventually installed Archelaus as Ethnarch. The new ruler of Judaea then did what any respectable despot would do: returned to his kingdom and eliminated his enemies. The end of the parable has the anonymous nobleman say... Luke 19:27 Are these passages a reference to Archelaus? There's no way to say for certain, but the Biblical account seems to jibe with Josephus.
