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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Nemo, post: 2304873, member: 58462&quot;]Thanks for the kind words everyone, it&#039;s very much appreciated. This year has been the best by far for my collection, due in a large part from learning from all of the collective knowledge on these boards.</p><p><br /></p><p>Adding rare Flavians is always a special treat. For me, Flavian silver is as rare as V70 says it is, regardless of any other measure, end of story. The &quot;V70 Recherche Scale&quot; if you will. I&#039;m just happy you don&#039;t collect doubles V!</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s my write up for the Mazaios stater, most of which came from great articles written by Walter M. Shandruk and Reid Goldsborough.&nbsp; It is hard to pack this much history into one coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>The obverse of the coin depicts the Baal of Tarsos.

&quot;Baal&quot; is a Semitic word for &quot;Lord&quot; or &quot;God.&quot; The symbols of an eagle, wheat stalk, grapes, and a scepter may represent Baal’s capacity as a god involved in the seasonal cycles of life and death.</p><p><br /></p><p>The reverse features a lion-and-bull motif as did earlier Anatolian coins of Kroisos/Croesus. But here, on the reverse, the full bodies of both lion and bull are shown, and the lion is ferociously jumping on the back of the bull, who&#039;s kneeling.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you assume that a kneeling bull (without a lion) on the scores of later Greek and Roman coins is symbolic of Zeus, a position that Marvin Tameanko has persuasively argued for (Celator, Jan. 1995, pp. 6-11), and that the lion is symbolic of the supreme god, or Baal, of the Celicians, the symbolism of this coin, may be direct and simple: Our god is more powerful than your god.</p><p><br /></p><p>The Baal obverse of Mazaios&#039; coinage may have been used as the model for the Zeus reverse of Alexander the Great&#039;s huge output of silver coinage, though Martin Price believed that both coinages were based on similar models. Price did feel, however, that the celator who engraved the latter Mazaios staters also engraved Alexander III&#039;s Tarsos tetradrachms.</p><p><br /></p><p>Mazaios (also referred to as &quot;Mazaeus&quot; and &quot;Mazday&quot;) was the Persian satrap of Celicia beginning c. 361 BC, then the satrap of both Celicia and the larger territory of Transeuphratesia/Transeuphrates (Syria and Palestine, also known as Abar Nahara) beginning c. 345 BC.</p><p><br /></p><p>Mazaios fought Alexander the Great at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC. After this loss, he fled to Babylon. With the Great King Darius III of Persia also fleeing Alexander&#039;s army, Mazaios was the person who surrendered the capital of the Persian Empire, Babylon, to Alexander later in 331 BC, which prevented the sack of the city. For doing this without a fight, Alexander appointed him governor of Babylon, which at the time was the world&#039;s largest city. Mazaios died in 328 BC.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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