The dawn of Nabataean coinage.

Yours is nicer than mine Steve. For mine i had to look for one with a full neck and Aretas spelled out, since that was important to me. I would bet 99% of everyone would take yours over mine though.

 

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Your probably right - but I will happily take yours and Bing's any day of the week.

 

WOW! Thats a great find for an uncleaned lot and a decent coin all the way around.

I'd pass out if I found that-even in that condition.

 

Just to be clear though, the king on the Denarius of M. Aemelius Scaurus is Aretas III, not the Aretas II that issued the coin in my first post.

 

medoraman => hmmm, I must admit that I'm a bit jealous that your coin has "Aretas" spelled-out ... well played

 

Wow, I find that hard to believe. Actually, I thought I lost the coin when I went to the FUN show in January. However, it had fallen out of my pocket in the car and I found it on the floorboard in the back seat a cou[le of weeks later. I would like to find another in the OP coin's condition or, heaven forbid, in Jerry's coin's condition.

 

Today I came across this masters thesis by Anna Acettola at Brandeis University, written last year. She proposes that the Nabataeans willfully adopted many outward appearances of their surrounding cultures in order to make themselves more inviting to foreign traders. There was a dichotomy between their public and private cultures.

It's a long, thick read - probably something that most casual collectors wouldn't be interested in, but it's the most insightful analysis of this mysterious society I've found so far...

https://bir.brandeis.edu/bitstream/handle/10192/30/Accettola M.A. Thesis.pdf?sequence=1

 

Here's a link to Coinage of the Caravan Kingdoms should anyone like it. It's also a thick read, but focused entirely on numismatics...

http://www.academia.edu/817653/Important_Additions_to_the_Corpus_of_Nabataean_Coins_since_1990

 

As an addendum to this thread, after reading Coinage of the Caravan Kingdoms, I've become aware of the proto-Nabataean coins that were over-struck on Ptolemaic hosts, prior to the first issues of Aretas II. Hoover and Barkay make a compelling argument that these coins can be dated between 250 and 200 BC (pages 198-199).

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So it turns out that the first issues of Aretas II were following an earlier precedent regarding the Athena/Nike typology. I don't own any of these proto-Nabataean coins, but I am attaching images of two examples...

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Fyi, that articles is only one in the anthology. Probably the one most relevant to your collecting interests, but there are a ton of other great works in the full print version.

 

I may have discovered a couple of coins that share the same obverse die. The facial features are very close, and the beading of the hair overlays quite well. It's difficult to say though - they might be coincidentally close, and that's extent of it. I'm not sure how far you can go with a die study on this poorly-struck series when most of the examples are severely worn...



The reverses of these two do not match up, however.

It's also an enigma as to why the engravers went to such length to get the facial features of Athena just right, but settled for beading as far as the hair and helmet plume detail go.

 

Looks like a die match to me.

 

I've been examining the varieties of Meshorer 1 and 2, but before I post anything about that, I'd like to offer a composite photo of a handful of the so-called proto-Nabataean coins. None of these pieces are mine - they're images that I've collected from the web. They are all Athena/Nike types struck over Ptolemaic hosts. As you can see, the size and weight of the coins in my composite vary within a narrow tolerance, except for the weight of #2, but Hoover and Barkay record a wide variation in CCK, from 15 to 21.9mm, and from 2.54 to 8.65g.

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The Nabataean caravan routes were extensive and far-reaching, and the traders likely encountered coinage of many nations, so it's likely that most bronze was traded by weight. That might account for the variance in the weight of the host coins (and later flans) - it would make sense to have coins of varying sizes for the sake adding up a certain weight of bronze.

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However, I'm not completely convinced of the argument that Hoover and Barkay make for dating the proto-Nabataean overstrikes to the third century BC, and I'll explain that in a later post.

 

I had forgotten this thread started with a newp until I got a knock on the door this morning from the mailman, with a registered letter from Israel - at long last. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this coin has a rich, dark-green patina. Here it is in true color...

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I realize it's not really much of a coin, but anyone who's looked into Nabataean pieces knows that this is one of the better examples of the type.

 

An itsy-bitsy bit of ancient history from an obscure and mysterious people...

 

Very nice, JA => that is a purdy lil' coin with very eye-appealing colour!! (I'm givin' it full-points!!)

 

Btw, here is a tidbit i read last in Hendin for you JA. Herod the great was ethnically Nabatean. His grandfather's are was conquered by Judea, and he voluntarily converted to judaism.

Cool huh?

 

I had no idea. Well as they say, when in Rome...

 

It explains why Herod was not high priest like most other judaic kings, and why he had problems with the jews he ruled.

Little tidbits like this just make collecting more interesting.

 

I acquired this piece today, and you might be tempted to ask why. These early Greek-imitative issues are neither well-struck nor well-preserved to begin with, and this one is a particularly poor example of the type.

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However, it does have one redeeming quality that is scarce. Meshorer catalogs these pieces as 1 and 1A. 1 includes a crescent over Λ in the left field of the reverse, 1A does not have these marks.

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Most of these coins exist in such a state that one can't discern which category they belong to. They are either too worn, or struck off-center left, so that the left field is off the flan. In most cases one can only attribute them as 1 OR 1A. See this link at Coin Project...

http://www.coinproject.com/search_emperor.php?emp=Aretas-II-&region=NABATAEAN-KINGDOM&type=12

This piece, however, was struck off-center right enough so that the marks are clearly and boldly visible, which is really its only redeeming numismatic virtue.

One is tempted to guess at the meaning of the marks. Perhaps Λ is Alpha and refers to Aretas himself, and the crescent has something to do with things of a celestial nature, or perhaps it's a stylized crown, etc. But it's all baseless conjecture.