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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Ed Snible, post: 2905160, member: 82322&quot;]I went easy on the purchases to prepare for some auctions later this month.</p><p><br /></p><p>I came home with a 1604 Lion Daaldar and a Himyarite coin, both from Ephesus Numismatics.&nbsp; Although the Himyarite coin bust is in poor style it has a full inscription and the grade seemed very high.&nbsp; When I got back to the hotel I found a previous auction appearance where it was described as near mint state.&nbsp; Here is the auction photo:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]700665[/ATTACH]</p><p>IMYARITES. ‘Amdan Bayyin Yanuf, 2nd century AD. AR Scyphate Quinarius (1.16 gm) of Raidan mint. 13mm</p><p>Obv: Male head right, within torc</p><p>Rev: Himyarite/Sabatean legend ? &quot;<i>ʿMDN 1 BYN&quot;</i> &quot;<i>RYDN&quot;</i>; Small male head, monogram to left, scepter symbol (or monogram?) to right.</p><p>Ref: Sear, <i>GIC</i> 5717. Munro-Hay 3.2ai.</p><p>ex-Pegasi Numismatics, Auction XXXIV, May 2016, lot 243 (unsold)</p><p><br /></p><p>This is my first Arabian coin although I have been curious for a while.&nbsp; I don&#039;t know if you are going to be able to see the Himyarite inscription text above.&nbsp; I am on Mac OSX 10.12 which includes a font for the South Arabian script used on these coins!&nbsp; I have not found any web sites on these coins that includes the inscriptions.&nbsp; I figured out how to enter them using Munro-Hay&#039;s article “The coinage of Shabwa (Hadhramawt), and othe ancient south arabian coinage in the national museum, Aden” [free at <a href="http://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1991_num_68_1_7224" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1991_num_68_1_7224" rel="nofollow">http://www.persee.fr/doc/syria_0039-7946_1991_num_68_1_7224</a> ] and Wikipedia&#039;s page <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_South_Arabian_script" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_South_Arabian_script" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_South_Arabian_script</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Using the Wikipedia page I was actually able to read the mint name, RYDN, and the ruler&#039;s name MDN BYN.&nbsp; There were two characters that didn&#039;t make sense, a vertical bar that look like South Arabian 1 and a ] that was not in the Unicode standard nor explained in the article I looked at.</p><p><br /></p><p>I almost bought a Sasanian bronze brockage.&nbsp; (I actually thought it was Arab Sasanian but Steve Album had it as Sasanian).&nbsp; I didn&#039;t even know such things existed.&nbsp; It was not unreasonably priced, but it belongs in a specialist&#039;s collection rather than mine.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Update</b> The South Arabian text can&#039;t be entered into BBCode forums, it seems.&nbsp; The HTML for what I was trying to show is &amp;#68210;?&amp;#68213;&amp;#68204;&amp;#68221;&amp;#68200;&amp;#68218;&amp;#68204; &amp;#703;MDN 1 BYN &amp;#68199;&amp;#68218;&amp;#68213;&amp;#68204; RYDN[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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