Interpreting three Gold Coins from Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East at the Museo Casa de la Moneda, Madrid

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study three gold coins from the pre-Hellenistic Egypt and Near East, housed in the Museum Casa de la Moneda, Madrid, since 1955. In all three cases, their description is made as well as a review of the hypotheses that have been issued on their typology. Some novel proposals are made about their iconography and the possible gold sources for the raw material. The first is a Daric, probably coined between the beginning of the reign of Xerxes I and the fall of Sardis under Alexander the Great. The study provides an original indication about its iconography, as well as about the possible (and vague) relationship of Persian imperial coinage with Zoroastrianism, the official religion of the Achaemenid Dynasty. The nbw nfr coin is an Egyptian coinage from the Nectanebos Dynasty; one of the few hundred preserved copies. The iconography of the horse on the obverse is explored from the art and plastic of pre- and post-Sebenitic Egypt, and some technical aspects of the elaboration of the coin from the type of its reverse are analysed. From an epigraphic point of view, a new reading of the nbw nfr group is proposed. The Double Daric is a complex currency, both regarding the precise determination of its chronology, as well as its interpretation and recipients. It is a coinage made possibly in Babylon with a broad chronology from 331 BCE until ca. 306 B