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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 1643466, member: 42773&quot;]After further research, I&#039;m not sure my coin is properly attributed - it may be an issue of Aretas IV. Here is my reasoning...</p><p><br /></p><p>First of all, I have not made an error in distinguishing between the&nbsp; open and closed Mim versions of MLHU issues. One can find many examples&nbsp; among the Malichus II Jugate/Cornucopiae coins wherein the Mim is open,&nbsp; but the legend clearly spells MLHU. Here is one example...</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://postimage.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://postimage.org/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://s3.postimage.org/lv050thf7/MLHU.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>However,&nbsp; Aretas IV also issued coins of this design a generation earlier,&nbsp; featuring a jugate portrait on the obverse, crossed cornucopiae on the&nbsp; reverse with names of both the king and queen. To complicate matters,&nbsp; his queen was also named Shekilat, and to even further complicate&nbsp; matters, the first letter of Aretas&#039; name in Nabatean is spelled with&nbsp; Hēth - which is one of the letters easily confused with the open Mim.</p><p><br /></p><p>There may be design elements or a provenance to my coin that clearly attribute it to Malichus II, but I&#039;m not aware of those yet. I simply trusted the dealer&#039;s attribution. The problem with that is that I found a handful of improperly attributed pieces on vcoins, even among the most reputable dealers, and that called into question the attribution of my coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>Now the spelling of Aretas in Nabatean is Hēth, Rēsh, Tau, Tau, or HRTT in the Roman. Here&#039;s a fine example of this issue under his reign...</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://postimage.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://postimage.org/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://s4.postimage.org/3me86ggel/aretas3.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p>It is possible that my coin has the legend HRTT (Aretas). In fact, it seems to fit the picture better than MLHU, but it&#039;s difficult to say since part of the legend is missing.</p><p><br /></p><p style="text-align: center"><a href="http://postimage.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://postimage.org/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://s7.postimage.org/3rxqv7j3v/malichusaretas.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve contacted the dealer to see what diagnostics he used to attribute the coin - it&#039;s entirely likely that I&#039;m missing something, but if one goes by the king&#039;s name itself, it would appear that HRTT fits better than MLHU.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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