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Bronze - Æ 12-14 mm - 1,8 grams - Die axis 12:00. |
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- Legend indiscernible -
Laureate head of taenia’d king with long hair facing right.
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HP (HR - Het Ros - Aretas).
Two filled Cornucopia's, crossed. Aramaic monogram (HR) between the horns. Possibly a small C above the left stick of the H.
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Towards the close of the 2nd century BC, when the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms were equally depressed, the Nabataean kingdom came to the front under Aretas III Philhellene, (c.85 - 60 BC). It is then that the royal coins begin. The Nabataeans used the Aramaic script, and you read it from right to left, the Nabataean script is very close to modern Hebrew.
The best-known Aretas is Aretas IV, (Aretas IV called himself 'rym 'mh' = 'he who loves his people' = Philopatris) ruler of S Palestine, most of Jordan, N Arabia, and Damascus. Aretas assumed rule after the demise of Obodas, who ws probably poisioned. The man who (again : propably) helped Aretas was Syllaeus. Syllaeus was later on sent to Rome were he was thrown of the Tarpeian rock (Syllaeus was accused of having, years before, led a Roman army to its demise in to the desert (wandering they probably reached Yemen). By this time the Romans thought them a client kingdom. The Nabaetans themselves probably did not exactly share this view.
Aretas’ daughter was married to Herod Antipas, who left her in favor of Herodias. Subsequently the enraged Aretas attacked Herod A. (AD 36) and defeated him, but Rome took Antipas' part. Tiberius' death (AD 37) saved Aretas from the Roman army.
As for the monogram, it appears to be simply the Nabataean latter for a hard 'H'. It's used as the first letter of Aretas' name on those coins which bear it, but that raises the issue of how the name was pronounced, and whether the Greek 'Aretas' is really what he called himself. Nabataean is an abjad (alphabet with no vowels) like Hebrew, but while other names have more or less the letters you'd expect, it's hard to make sense of HRTT. If he had a Nabataean name plus a Greek name, like the Hasmoneans, then I wonder why nobody else seems to have had the two. (For the last paragraph : thanks Robert Brenchley of Forvm !)
Minted in the subordinate Kingdom of Petra.
Obv.: Good, but very off-centre, left side is flat (08:-10:) - Rev. : Good, slightly off-centre.
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