Here’s a crusty piece that I was very happy to order today. I may decide to give it a bit of a cleaning – depends on how I like it in hand. But the legends are clearly readable, which was the most important consideration for me, so maybe I’ll leave it as-is. Aretas III AE20, 7.04g Obv.: Diademed head of Aretas III r. Rev.: Tyche of Damascus turreted, seated left on rock, wearing mantle on lower part of body, holding cornucopiae in left hand, extending right hand, river god of Chrysorrhoas River swimming below (off flan); in field, in three vertical lines, the inscription ΒΑΣΙΛΣ(ΩΕ)/ΑΡΕΤΟ(Υ)/ΦΙΛΕΛΛΗΝ(ΟΣ), last word divided by hand of Tyche into ΦΙΛ ΕΛΛΗΝ(ΟΣ). Meshorer 6A The inscription translates: KING ARETAS PHILHELLEN. It’s the first time a Nabataean king puts his name on a coin, and that marks the beginning of Nabataean coinage that can be accurately attributed. I’ll post more about the coin and Aretas III later.
Wow, you're really bringin' the "knowledge-portion" of collecting ancient coins!! => well done my knowledgey coin-friend, well done (thanks for the info ... your stuff is very interesting)
OK Class, here’s everything you never wanted to know about this coin, and why it’s special to me. This is probably going to be one of those entries that the forum software makes me cut in two, because you can’t put more than 10,000 characters in a post. Pfft. I can’t even say hello without a few hundred characters, Anyway, back in the good old days of the 1st-century BC, Alexander Jannaeus, the king of the Judaeans, decided his backyard was a getting a little too small, and the only solution was to take over the world. The good folk of Damascus didn’t particularly care for this plan, but they had a bit of a problem: their Seleucid boss-man, Antiochus VII had just departed for the big bacchanal in the sky. Now Antiochus may not have been the nicest guy in the world, but he had been a very good general, spending most of his time traipsing around the Near East kicking everyone’s butt. Damascus had been safe from the Judaeans as long as Antiochus was around, but now they needed a new guy to take over. After carefully examining a number of resumes, they asked Aretas III, the king of the Nabataeans to step in. They figured he’d do a good job because, after all, how would you feel if ten thousand furious Arabs came charging at you on camels, brandishing scimitars? It turns out that they made the right choice. Aretas III rounded up all his minions, marched into Judaea, and unloaded a serious can of whup-ass on Jannaeus. Alex finally had enough and said, “Whoa, dude, relax! I was kidding! I’ll just go back home and play with my harem”. And thus began the reign of Aretas III over Damascus in 84 BC. Have a seat, Tyche… Now as far as divine entities go, Tyche had done a pretty good job of protecting Damascus, but evidently an earlier Seleucid king, Demetrius III, had decided that she needed a break. On at least one type of his coins, he had her take a seat. She was a goddess after all, and she could probably fulfill her duties just as well sitting down as standing up. So we were now presented with the Tyche of Damascus found on my coin: turreted, seated left on rock, right hand extended, holding cornucopiae, river god swimming underneath. Actually, a similar version of Tyche had appeared earlier on the coins of Antioch, but Demetrius wasn’t renowned for original thought. This version of Tyche was so popular, that she was taken up by the Armenians that ruled Damascus after Aretas III, for instance, Tigranes I. (Keep this coin in your back pocket – it takes a starring role later on.)… And she continued on the Damascus coins well into Roman provincial times. Augustus… Numismatic Sleuthing… So we know exactly when the Nabataean coin would have been issued: the first year of Aretas III’s reign in Damascus, 84 BC. Figuring out when the run ended is also possible, but we need to go about it like Shelock Holmes. We know that at some point, the Armenian king Tigranes took over after Aretas III – nobody’s quite sure what happened there, but it’s possible that Aretas just decided to pack his bags and move to Petra. After all, Petra was starting to turn into the Nabataean version of the Taj Mahal, and any respectable king is going to need his Park Avenue address. Fortunately for us coin sleuths, some of Tigranes’s coins, like the one pictured above, exhibit the Tyche of Damascus, telling us exactly where they were minted. If we could discover when these Armenian coins began their run, we could put an end date to the Nabataean issues as well. Unfortunately, Tigranes did not date his bronze coins, but happily he did produce silver coins at Damascus with dates. The earliest one known is dated to 242 of the Seleucid era, corresponding to 71 BC. So it’s clear that these issues of Aretas III would not have been minted after that year. It’s possible that they were discontinued earlier – an earlier Damascus silver of Tigranes could be discovered, but the information we have now sets the run of the Nabataean piece between 84 BC and 71 BC. Heh...made it under the wire.
This coin is right up my alley. Not the prettiest but pretty darn awesome all the same! Thanks for the lesson! Love learning about stuff I know very little about!
That particular coin isn't easy to find, Whiz. I only see one other on the market, offered by a dealer in UAE, but it's almost worn smooth - there's just enough of the legend to attribute it correctly. But if you're just interested in a coin that has Tyche of Damascus on the reverse, there are plenty to choose from with other rulers. You'll also find a version of seated Tyche on various Antioch coins. The idea may have come from much earlier Greek depictions of Zeus or Apollo sitting down, but that's just a guess on my part... NOT MY COIN...
That makes sense. There are other popular coins circulating in waning Seleucid Empire at the time. For example, tetradrachms of Philip I which were circulating in and around the area during the reign of Aretas. These coins followed the Hellenistic style with the bust of the king right and a seated a Zeus surrounded by text. You can see the similar in the coins of Attembelos of the Kingdom of Characene Modern Kuwait (Next door neighbor) Complete with the BAS, Title and Name in the right field date left field?
You've touched on some of my other collecting interests here, and they have to do with coinage in the Near East during the 1st-century BC. Once the Seleucids lost control, a number of cultures were free to mint their own coin. I've collected a bronze of Tyre from this period, here. And I'm looking to add some pieces from Ashkelon and Judaea. Those are tangential to the Nabataean collection, but the Nabataeans almost certainly would have used the Tyrian Shekels in commerce, as their main export facility for Arabian goods was Tyre. That might explain why they didn't bother to mint their own silver till much later. I wonder if any of the old Seleucid bronzes would have been considered legal tender in the region, after 125 BC... That time period, in that century, is particularly fascinating to me because it was a real hodge-podge of coins.
I'll add one more post, just because I'm bored. This one coin of Aretas III is the only coin officially attributed to him that I expect to collect. I may add more of this type to my collection - it would be nice to find a less crusty specimen, but the other bronze types in his series, Me 5 and 7 are exceedingly rare. The only extant examples are in museums. The silver type, Me 8 is unique. I do, however, want to collect the Scaurus denarius that commemorates Aretas' "defeat" at the hand of the Romans, because that coin is directly related to Nabataean history. The next Nabataean king on my list is Obodas II, but in Coins of the Caravan Kingdoms, Martin Huth makes a compelling argument that there was no such king, and that all the coins Meshorer attributed to Obodas II should belong to Obodas III, who should really be called Obodas II. Got it? So really I should be looking at Malichus I, whose coins aren't really rare, but scarce enough to make them worth a bundle of scratch.
You might also want to get yourself a Himyar! Modern Yemen. Himyarite Tribal Confederacy Anonymous 1/2 Scyphate Denarius? 50 BC-50 AD
They're on my distant to-do list, AN. I like both the Himyarite and Sabaean coinages, and they were the trading partners from whom the Nabataeans got all their frankincense. The export of frankincense is largely what made the Nabataeans rich, and contributed to the building of Petra. That's another fabulous coin. Thank you for posting it!
