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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 1036256, member: 57463&quot;]No, it is not Greek.&nbsp; You can tell by the lettering.&nbsp; It looks like Phoenician, not like Greek.&nbsp; Also, if you go here (<a href="http://nabataea.net/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://nabataea.net/" rel="nofollow">http://nabataea.net/</a>) you will find out more than you cared to know.&nbsp; For one thing, they traded widely in everything.&nbsp; Also, when the Romans came, they abandoned Petra and evaporated back into the desert.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>The &quot;mystery&quot; of the Nabatean &quot;empire&quot; comes from our own expectations of &quot;empires&quot; being made by the sword.&nbsp; We want kings, borders, armies, and all that.&nbsp; That is the warrior or guardian mentality.&nbsp; The trader&#039;s way is different from that.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>This is a problem we have in numismatics because of the wider culture we are in.&nbsp; Not much has been written well about business.&nbsp; There were Benjamin Franklin (<a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/52-fra.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/52-fra.html" rel="nofollow">The Way to Wealth here</a>) and Adam Smith, of course.&nbsp; Then Herbert Spencer.&nbsp; In the previous generation, Ayn Rand was better known than Jane Jacobs but Jacobs&#039;s <i>The Economy of Cities</i> and <i>Systems of Survival</i> should be classics.&nbsp; Today, we have Dierdre McCloskey&#039;s <i>Bourgeois Virtues</i>.&nbsp; I am sure that you never heard of any of these in school -- but you know of Karl Marx...&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Then, we try to figure out the history of money. </p><p><br /></p><p>A hundred and 150 years ago, British numismatists did great work organizing the artifacts of the past, but none of them ever worked in a shop.&nbsp; So, they made some serious mistakes trying to understand the modes and methods of ancient coinage in commerce.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hey, look, I&#039;m standing on soap box... where did that come from? ... </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway, the coin does not have Greek letters.&nbsp; Meshorer called it &quot;Aramaic&quot; and he would know.&nbsp; If you goto CoinArchives and enter &quot;Nabataea&quot; or <a href="http://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?search=nabataea&amp;s=0&amp;results=100" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?search=nabataea&amp;s=0&amp;results=100" rel="nofollow">follow this link</a>&nbsp; you can see the full range of their issues.&nbsp; You might wonder why such successful traders struck such unimpressive coins.&nbsp; You might wonder why coins were invented in Lydia, not Phoenicia...[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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