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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 2771659, member: 42773&quot;]Ken Dorney sent me this charming little bronze of Arados...</p><p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]639298[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>One of the reasons I wanted it was for the clear date beneath the prow on the reverse. These are Aradian-era dates in which year 1 = 260/59 BC. The wiki article on the Phoenician alphabet concisely sums up the reading of the the numerals so I quote it in full...</p><p><br /></p><p><font size="4">The Phoenician numeral system consisted of separate symbols for 1, 10, 20, and 100. The sign for 1 was a simple vertical stroke (). Other numbers up to 9 were formed by adding the appropriate number of such strokes, arranged in groups of three. The symbol for 10 was a horizontal line or tack (). The sign for 20 () could come in different glyph variants, one of them being a combination of two 10-tacks, approximately Z-shaped. Larger multiples of ten were formed by grouping the appropriate number of 20s and 10s. There existed several glyph variants for 100 (). The 100 symbol could be combined with a preceding numeral in a multiplicatory way, e.g. the combination of &quot;4&quot; and &quot;100&quot; yielded 400. Their system did not contain a numeral zero. -<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet" rel="nofollow">wiki</a></font></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero" rel="nofollow"></a></p><p>I believe I&#039;ve read the date on my coin correctly as, from right to left: (2X100)+10+1+1+1+1+1, or year 215, or 45/4 BC. If anyone knows better, please correct me!</p><p style="text-align: center"><br /></p> <p style="text-align: center">[ATTACH=full]639300[/ATTACH]</p> <p style="text-align: center"><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>What makes these dates so appealing is that we can place the coins in their historical context in a very precise way. This coin was minted very close to Julius Caesar&#039;s murder in 44 BC. The Aradians allied themselves with Caesar&#039;s assassin, C. Cassius Longinus in 43, and in the same year were approached by P. Cornelius Dolabella for naval support. After the defeat of Caesar&#039;s murderers in 42, Arados went on to oppose Mark Antony, etc.</p><p><br /></p><p>Does anyone else have coins with Phoenician dates? - let&#039;s have a study group.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet#cite_note-23" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenician_alphabet#cite_note-23" rel="nofollow"></a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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