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Message:: [QUOTE="GinoLR, post: 24661575, member: 128351"]I can see no special reason to consider the double city wall on Mazaios coins, obviously minted at Tarsus, as a representation of Jerusalem more than of Tarsus itself. I suppose there have been many books and articles about the symbolic of the city walls. It is a symbol you can find as soon as pre-dynastic Egypt in the 3rd Millenium BC (Narmer as a bull dismantling the enemy city-walls). In the late Bronze Age the enemy cities are symbolized in Egyptian art by a double city wall on a mound, and in hieroglyphic script the name of enemy nations or city-states is enclosed in crenellated cartouches. Later, the same symbolic of the fortress-city is found in neo-Assyrian art, when sieges are depicted. [ATTACH=full]1572164[/ATTACH]The city of Qadesh, relief from Ramses II temple in Abu Simbel In neo-Assyrian art as well as in archirecture, one can notice that the merlons are triangular. Triangluar merlons will be later found on Hellenistic and Roman era temples, sarcophagi, Nabataean tombs, and even later on mosques. This particular merlon shape is likely to have a religious signification meaning "holy" or "sacred". Near-Eastern cities often claimed to be "sacred"; it is the meaning of the city-name Qadesh, for example, in the late Bronze Age, and in Hellenistic times many cities claimed to be "hiera kai asylos". In numismatics I don't remember if there were any European Greek coins depicting walled cities, but in the 5th and 4th c. BC this walled city type can be seen on Phoenician and Philistine coins, at Gaza, Sidon, Tyre... In Hellenistic times this city-wall symbol will become the walled crown of the local Tyche. [ATTACH=full]1572165[/ATTACH]Philistia (Gaza?) AR 4.11 g (5th or 4th c. BC). Not my coin [ATTACH=full]1572166[/ATTACH] Sidon, 1/16th of shekel, late 5th c. BC [ATTACH=full]1572167[/ATTACH]Syria, Laodicea, AE 25mm under Trajan. The local Tyche wearing her mural crown This is why we may consider these walled cities on pre-Alexander Oriental coins as ancestors of the later Tyche theme, wearing a mural crown: a symbol of the city herself with her sacred status. In ancient literature we can find an equivalent of this theme in Revelation 21: the new Jerusalem, of which only the city walls are described. [ATTACH=full]1572168[/ATTACH]Rome, basilica Santa Maria Maggiore, the vision of Heavenly Jerusalem with her walls made of gems and precious stones (Revelation 21). 5 th c. AD mosaic[/QUOTE]

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