CNG 85, Lot: 102. Estimate $100. Sold for $310. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ARMENIA, Cilician Armenia. Royal. Hetoum I and Zabel. 1226-1270. AR Tram (20mm, 3.00 g, 12h). Zabel and Hetoum standing facing one another, each crowned with head facing and holding long cross between / Crowned lion advancing right, head facing, holding long cross. AC 336; CCA 906 var. (long cross decorated). Choice EF.

From the R.A. Collection.

Upon his death in 1219, Levon I left his three year old daughter Zabel as his only heir. Struggles for succession by crusader pretenders followed, with John of Brienne, the King of Jerusalem, claiming priority with his ties to the Roupenians, only to be threatened with excommunication by Pope Honorius III. Levon’s grand nephew, Raymond-Roupen, seized Tarsus, but was quickly driven back by the Armenian general and regent for Zabel, Gosdantin, who ordered Raymond’s execution. Gosdantin then offered the throne to Philip, the fourth son of Bohémond IV of Antioch. After looting the treasury, Philip was soon dethroned in 1224. Finally, with the consent of the Catholicos and the barons, Gosdantin married his own son Hetoum to Zabel in 1226.

Though initially not a happy marriage, Zabel later agreed to live with Hetoum, with the union joining the two principal dynastic forces of Cilicia and ultimately ending territorial and dynastic rivalry between them.