Xerxes I (King Ahaseurus), Persian Empire, Silver Siglos

This coin’s chronological attribution¹ to 485-470 BCE aligns with the first fifteen regnal years of Persian King Xerxes I, whose father was King Darius I and whose mother was a daughter of Cyrus the Great.  Of significant biblical note this Xerxes is believed to have been the King Ahasuerus mentioned over 30 times in Scripture, and a central figure in the Book of Esther as the king who sent away Queen Vashti and made Esther his new queen.²  He is alluded to in Daniel 11:2 as the “fourth” king. Xerxes succeeded Darius on the Persian throne after a very brief reign by Xerxes’ older brother. Xerxes I then reigned ca. 485-465 BCE.

As the above picture indicates, the practice of producing coins with only a one-side design continued under Xerxes’ reign. On this particular coin type the royal Persian personage is shown moving to the right, wearing a spiked crown, sporting a long beard, and carrying a long standard or sceptre in his right hand. Although his left hand is not visible on this example due to the slightly off-center strike, other examples of this type show that the left hand holds a military bow. It is conceivable that the personage shown was intended as the likeness of King Xerxes himself.

The size and weight of this silver coin reveals that it is a siglos, which along with the gold daric denomination formed the basis of the precious metal monetary system in the post-Croeseid Persian era. Sigloid (plural for siglos) were made from nearly pure silver³, and were produced in enormous numbers. The silver siglos, weighing the equivalent of one-third Persian shekel, is quite likely the amount referenced by the Nehemiah 10:32 statement that the annual Temple contribution was to be a third portion of a shekel. This is because at that time the elsewhere biblically established Temple donation of one-half (Judean) shekel was equal to one-third of a Persian shekel. Accordingly, the full silver siglos denomination was the Temple donation stated by Nehemiah.⁴

Although Darius’ attempt to fully subjugate all resistant Greek states stalled, his son Xerxes spent multiple years of planning effort to accomplish what his father was not able to do. Xerxes diligently sought to amass sufficient army/naval strength and develop superior, clever military strategy.  A key event in this regard was the 480 BCE large-scale assault by Xerxes on the Greeks in the Battle of Thermopylae, at which the infamous “300” Spartan warriors held off the Persian advance for 3 days at a narrow mountain pass near the Gulf of Malia. The Persian army’s victory there directly led to Persia’s overtaking and burning of Athens – including the Acropolis, the city’s pride and joy.

But within a year, after multiple defeats by an alliance of Greek states at Salamis, Mycale, and Plataea, the tide of the war shifted to a Greek offensive and Persian retreat. On the heels of this embarrassment to Xerxes, with the third year⁵ through seventh years of his reign having been totally consumed with his attempted Greek invasion⁶, he returned to his royal home in Susa. At this juncture commences the narrative portions of Esther which tell of the king’s self-solace through great material and sensual pleasures⁷.  It was in the tenth month of his seventh regnal year that he took Esther as his wife and queen in place of the disposed Vashti (Esther 2:19).   

Despite King Xerxes’ military failure in Greece, his sins of bragging upon sacred vessels of precious metal as though they were his own (Esther 1:4), his moral error of putting his wife Queen Vashti away (Esther 1:19), and his horribly naïve gullibility of having fallen for the evil plotting of Haman (Esther 3:8-9), there were two significant ways in which he acted positively with honor: 1. He issued a proclamation allowing Jews the right to defend themselves against enemies who attacked them (Esther 8:8-14). 2. He rightfully vindicated Mordecai after Haman’s false accusations and evil plotting against the Jews (Esther 6:10-8:2).

The Jewish holiday Purim is connected to these two honorable actions of Xerxes on behalf of the Jewish people. The annual holiday consists of a light fast with lamentation, followed by a joyous feast to celebrate the salvation from extermination of the Jewish people that God brought about through Esther, Mordecai, and Xerxes. See Esther 9:24-28 for scripture’s narrative of the establishment of this holiday.

ENDNOTES

¹ In private e-mail correspondence Professor Ian Carradice confirmed the attribution as Type III-b, with a dating to the period ca. 485-470 BCE.

² Jewish Encyclopedia, Ahasuerus article, Gerson B. Levi, Kaufmann Kohler, George A. Barton. “There can therefore be no doubt that the monarch whose name passed among the Hebrews as Ahasuerus was the one known as Khshāyarshā in the Persian inscriptions and among the Greeks as Xerxes.”

³  Siglos is the term for the ancient Persian silver coin that was equivalent to 1/20^th of a gold daric coin. Purity of silver in sigloid ranged from as high as 98% silver in the earlier issues to 94% at the end of their production in the 3^rd century B.C. [http://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Siglos]

⁴ Private communication with Isadore Goldstein, Brooklyn, NY

⁵ Esther 1:3, “In the third year of his reign, he gave a banquet for all his princes and attendants, the army officers of Persia and Media, the nobles, and the princes of his provinces being in his presence.”

⁶ Jewish Encyclopedia, Ahasuerus article, Gerson B. Levi, Kaufmann Kohler, George A. Barton.

⁷ Fausset’s Bible Dictionary, Ahasuerus article. “So Xerxes in his seventh year, on his defeat and return from Greece, consoled himself with the pleasures of the harem, and offered a reward for the inventor of a new pleasure (Herodotus 9:108).”