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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 2269155, member: 42773&quot;]Here&#039;s a tetradrachm of the Characene king Attambelos III (AD 37/38 - 44/45). Absolutely nothing is known of this king except his dates of rule, and that only because the Characenes were nice enough to date their coins according to Seleucid precedent. (Unfortunately the date on my example is too much off-flan to make it out.)</p><p><br /></p><p>If you&#039;re not versed in the history of this Arabian/Persian neck of the woods, basically Antiochus IV installed a satrap in this region (Aspasine), and when the Seleucid Empire started dissolving, the satrap became the ruler of a new kingdom that was mostly independent, but under the hegemony of the Parthians. First-Century sources record that the Characenes were called <i>Mesene</i>, and lived mostly on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf. Here&#039;s a nice map from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characene#/media/File:Karte_Charakene.png" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characene#/media/File:Karte_Charakene.png" rel="nofollow">wiki</a>...</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]451883[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The earliest coins of this kingdom are billon tetradrachms, but they appear to the naked eye to contain quite a bit of silver - I&#039;m guessing 60-70%. By the time of Attambelos III, however, they&#039;ve been debased to bronze.</p><p><br /></p><p>This is one of those coins where you take what you can get. The surfaces are rough, and it&#039;s a bit overcleaned, but the detail on this example is superior to any I&#039;ve seen. You can do much, much worse as far as the reverses go - just look at the <a href="http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/characene/attambelos_III/t.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/greece/characene/attambelos_III/t.html" rel="nofollow">Wildwinds page</a>. Also, it would seem that the reverse dies were considerably larger than the flans. Still working on attribution, but it&#039;s Hercules with his club...</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]451887[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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