Yehud (YHD) Athena & Owl silver Gerah (Ma’ah)

As with the YHD King’s-head coin and the YHD Lily-flower coin also in this collection, the tiny silver coin featured here was produced and circulated within what was the Persian province of Yehud centered closely around modern-day Jerusalem in 4^th century BCE while under Persian dominance. 

By its type and weight this coin is considered to be one Gerah. Exodus 30:13, Leviticus 27:25, Numbers 3:47, and Numbers 18:16 each state that a Shekel consisted of 20 Gerahs. Multiplying the weight of this example by 20 produces a result of 11.6 grams, remarkably near the 11.4 grams weight of an Iron-Age Judean Shekel. This closeness, in view of technology at the time of production, was quite a feat.¹  The study of the weight and monetary systems within the ancient Holy Land is complex and at times perplexing.  So much so that a close study of just the Gerah weight coinage alone has “caused a lot of headache to scholars.”²  

A notable factor of this YHD coin is that it was an intentional imitation of the much larger, internationally recognized,  silver tetradrachms struck in Athens which featured Athena on the obverse and an owl on the reverse – exactly as does this type! Hence, whereas other YHD coin types serve as numismatic evidence of Persian influence in the Holy Land, this type provides obvious numismatic evidence of early Greek influence (Hellenism) in the area even before the arrival of Alexander.

The Athena portrayal on both the YHD and Athens coin types are right-facing, in a profile view, with Athena wearing a helmet.  But nuances of style, visible on the very highest quality of extant YHD examples, can be discerned by experts.  Similarly, the two owls themselves are quite alike. Each stand to the right with head-facing, large eyes, and wings folded in back.  However, ethnic differences exist in what is seen behind and in front of the owl.  The Athenian owl type includes an olive sprig behind the owl, which is a direct reference to the goddess Athena’s gifting to Athens of its first olive tree in connection with her contest against the Greek god Poseidon. The YHD owl also includes a portion of a plant behind it, but rather than an olive sprig it is a three-petaled lily flower as a symbol of Jerusalem.³ A second difference is that the Athens owl stands aside a vertical, three-letter abbreviation in Greek for Athens (AΘE); while the Yehud owl stands aside a vertical, three-letter abbreviation in paleo-Hebrew for Yehud (as detailed below).  See the below diagram detailing the YHD inscription on this example.

Although the flans used for this type tended to be roundish, the fact that this specific example’s flan is oval allowed a full view of the owl. In regard to the centering of the reverse side, one could hardly hope for a more ideal outcome in terms of the shape of the flan accommodating the full height of the die. Had the flan been struck horizontally rather than vertically the top of the owl’s head and/or its feet would not have been stamped onto the flan at all (aka: off-flan). In addition, the reverse is sufficiently well-struck that its inscription is distinctly readable, and details of the owl’s feathers and feet are visible. The obverse was not as well-centered. Athena’s nose is near mid-point of the flan rather than close to the right edge as would be the result of a perfectly centered strike. The reality is that due to the miniscule size of this type’s dies and flans, only a very few YHD coins are centered on both sides.⁴  Also, Athena’s image is faint on this example, which was due either to having been weakly struck or more likely having been struck by a wear-degraded die. A vision of what a perfectly struck example would look like can be seen in the below composite image⁵ of this type from page 128 of Hendin’s Guide to Biblical Coins⁶.

Note that the reverse side of this composite image differs in one small detail from the coin featured on this page. Although the featured coin has a small crescent shape between the lily and the owl, the composite does not. The crescent is a holdover from the original Athens owl type, and is included on many of the other Athenian-imitative coins produced contemporaneously in the Holy Land area — most notably on issues attributed to Gaza.  Note also that the lily on the composite diagram is more lily-like than the one on the featured example. These slight differences are explained by the fact that “several varieties of this coin exist”.⁷   

333 BCE is the latest date that this coin would have been struck, as that is when Alexander the Great’s army achieved the demise of Persian control over the Holy Land. (Alexander’s arrival brought about a rather quick change in the coin types produced in an area). Determining the earliest date of possible issue for this type is not as exacting. However, because the earliest of the tiny Yehud coins which include a three-letter abbreviation of Yehud seem to have been produced near the end of the 1^st quarter of the 4^th century (i.e.: ca. 375 BCE) this coin type would not have preceded that date. Further, certain attributes of this type such as the tiny crescent on the reverse, when compared with types accepted as having been produced near the end of the YHD series, seem to indicate this coin was produced earlier rather than later during the ca. 375-333 BCE window. With these factors in mind, and leaning also on the fact that Hendin’s predominately chronological numbering system assigned this coin a catalogue number of 1050 which is only the 6th out of 22 ⁸ YHD types, it would seem a reasonable estimation that this coin type was produced ca. mid-4th century BCE and perhaps slightly earlier. This would relate to a time period just one century after the beginning of Ezra’s service as Priest and of Nehemiah’s rule as Governor.

It also bears pointing out that this coin type represents an estimated 15% of all extant Yehud coins and is “the most common of the early Yehud coins”.⁹ Despite the apparent large production, nice examples are quite scarce and are only occasionally offered for sale or at auction.

END NOTES:

¹ The weight of a Shekel did not remain constant, and in later centuries there were variations of the weight system such that one Gerah became 1/24^th of a Shekel and a half-Gerah 1/48^th of a Shekel.   

² Kletter, R. WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. In: New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible (NIDB) Vol. V: 831-841. [Available here: https://www.academia.edu/19048148/2009d_Weights_and_Measures ]. To partially demonstrate how involved the study of weights can become, read just the following one paragraph which contains the footnoted quote from above.

“The Judean Shekel was subdivided into 24 Gerah. This is proven by column 4 in Ostracon 6 from Kadesh Barnea, which gives a sequence of weights that reaches 20 Gerah and, after one missing item, the value of two Shekels (II γ). The missing item must be one Shekel, thus the Shekel included more Gerah than the former item of 20 Gerah. There were inscribed weights of 3-10 Gerah, but not of 12 Gerah, since this place was occupied by inscribed Beqa` weights (half Shekel = 12 Gerah). Other units in the system were the Nsf (5/6 Shekel, c. 9.6 g.) and the Pym (2/3 Shekel, c. 7.8 g.). The small units are heavier than their expected norms. For example, Beqa‘ weights weigh on average 6 g, while the expected half-Shekel norm is c. 5.66 g. The Gerah weights are the least accurate, and many are much heavier than their expected ‘norms’. This fact caused a lot of headache to scholars, who saw many different standards behind the deviating examples. Yet, the explanation is simpler: smaller weights are less accurate and more difficult to manufacture. The tendency towards the heavy side is consistent, and is most likely related to the production of such weights. Producers of small weights, trying not to err, preferred to stay on the ‘heavy side’ of the scales (manufacture was probably made by placing new weights on the scales against an earlier specimen; chipping slowly until equilibrium was reached).”

³ See “Yehud (YHD) lily flower half-gerah” coin in this collection.

⁴  Hendin, David. Guide to Biblical Coins , 5^th Ed. 2002; page 123.

⁵ A composite image is one that is produced using multiple images layered upon each other. As used here, a computer drawing is achieved from multiple images of actual coins, each of which included some portion of the whole. The result is what a coin would look like if boldly struck, with perfect centering on both sides.

⁶ Hendin, David. Guide to Biblical Coins , 5^th Ed. 2002

⁷  Hendin, David. Guide to Biblical Coins , 5^th Ed. 2002; page 126.

⁸ The 22 YHD coin types mentioned do not include the 9 Macedonian YHD types or the 13 Ptolemaic YHD types which were all produced after 333 BCE.

⁹ http://numismatics.org/pocketchange/author/dhendin