City Eras on Palestinian Coinage

Abstract

Abstract Thirty-Eight Palestinian Cities Minted coins at various times during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The vast majority of these coins bear dates, with the bulk of the dates involving individual city eras. During the third century bc, royal Ptolemaic silver was struck in several urban centres on the Palestinian coast. The coinage from Ptolemais, Joppe, and Gaza was fairly substantial and most of it was dated by the regnal years of the kings. One undated silver coin has also been attributed to Dora. On these Ptolemaic issues the cities are represented only by monograms. Palestine came under Seleucid control c.200 bc, after its final conquest by Antiochus III. From the reign of Antiochus IV (175–164) onwards, there are both royal and city coinages, the latter mostly of bronze. The dates which appear on many of these coins use the Seleucid era of 312 bc. As in the preceding century, only coastal cities were involved: Ptolemais, Ascalon, Gaza, and Demetrias. The location of the last city is not known for certain, but an identification with Strato’s Tower, later rebuilt by Herod as Caesarea, seems possible. There is more information about the cities themselves on these second-century coins. Royal issues often bear the names of cities as well as specific symbols, like the dove in Ascalon or the Phoenician mem in Gaza. City-coinage proper further mentions Seleucid dynastic names, like that of Seleucia for Gaza or Antioch for Ptolemais; we would not have known about these dynastic names if not for their appearance on these coins. In the last quarter of the second century, new titles, ‘sacred and inviolable’, appear on coins of Ptolemais, Ascalon, and Gaza. The first individual city eras were established in this region at the very end of the second century bc, with the earliest material evidence belonging to the beginning of the first century: Ascalon, coin of year 6 (99/98 bc); Gaza, coins of years 13 and 14 (96/95, 95/94 or slightly later); Ptolemais, coin of year 9 (apparently from the first decade of the first century bc). In Ascalon and Ptolemais the new era appears together with the addition of the title ‘autonomous’.