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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 1778356, member: 42773&quot;]<font face="Times New Roman">Here’s a Proto-Nabataean bronze overstruck on a Seleucid host. This is the only example of such an overstrike I’ve ever seen, so I had to jump on it. The overstrike creates a dramatic, if unintentional jugate portrait between Antiochus and Athena, and on the reverse you find the bold lettering (AN)TIoXoY, The dealer suggests that the host coin is of Antiochus VII, but I believe it belongs to Antiochus II or III – I’ll explain my reasoning later.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://postimage.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://postimage.org/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://s13.postimg.org/x1p6rrr5j/protonabantiochus.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Times New Roman">With the decline of the Seleucid Empire, various cultures in the Middle East began minting their own coinage. The first experiments of the Nabataeans consisted of striking Athena/Nike designs over extant small bronzes. To date, I’ve only seen overstrikes on Ptolemaic coins. Some of them are quite dramatic in displaying both the new design and remnants of the host coin. It’s likely that the host coins were not sufficiently annealed before being restruck. I have such an example here…</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://postimage.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://postimage.org/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://s14.postimg.org/b2ebvt6b5/aretasiioverstrike2.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Times New Roman">On the reverse, you find remnants of the Ptolemaic single-eagle device – yellow arrows point to the claws and feathers. You also find part of the legend, outlined in red.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://postimage.org/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://postimage.org/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://s16.postimg.org/3x6yxzlv9/aretasiioverstrike1.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Times New Roman">Meshorer wasn’t aware of these pieces when he published “Nabataean Coins” in 1975, or if he was, he didn’t attribute them to the Nabataeans. After that time, however, several of these restrikes were discovered among Nabataean hoards, and the typology linked them directly to the earliest issues of Aretas II. By 1990, Schmitt-Korte lists two of them in his addendum to Meshorer’s sylloge, “Nabataean Coinage – Part II, New Coin Types and Variants”, NC Volume 150. Hoover and Barkay examine a few more in CCK.</font></p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><font face="Times New Roman">This is the first Proto-Nabataean coin that I’ve seen overstruck on a Seleucid host. My reasons for attributing the original coin to Antiochus II or III (as opposed to Antiochus VII) is somewhat involved, so I’ll put it together and post it later.</font>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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