The Earliest Coin from Saudi Arabia
One of Seven Known

Triton XVI, Lot: 576. Estimate $15000. Sold for $35000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ARABIA, Eastern. Gerrha. Circa 230-220 BC. AR Tetradrachm (28mm, 16.80 g, 1h). Imitating the types of Alexander III of Macedon. Head of Herakles right, wearing lion skin / Shams, wearing tainia and chlamys, seated left on backless throne, holding eagle in his extended right hand, leaning with his left on a long staff; ΩBs (Shams in South Arabian [Musnad]) in left field, ¬¬E$Å@dro¨ in right. Huth 106a (this coin); Arnold-Biucchi, Arabian, pl. 18, 3; Potts –; HGC 10, 697 corr. (rarity R2, not R1). EF, underlying luster. Well centered and struck from fresh dies. Of considerable historic importance and extremely rare, one of seven known, the fifth of this variety without throne back, and one of only two not in public collections.

From the Martin Huth Collection. Ex Frankfurter Münzhandlung E. Button 109 (2 December 1963), 2101 (incorrectly described).

Martin Huth provides the following note:

After a first examination by Robin ("Monnaies provenant de l’Arabie du nord-est," Semitica 24 [1974], pp. 83-127) and Callot ("Les monnaies dites ‘arabes’ dans le nord du Golfe arabo-persique à la fin du IIIeme siècle avant notre ère" in: Y. Calvet & J. Gachet-Bizollon, Failaka: Fouilles Françaises 1986-1988 [Lyon: Maison de l'Orient, 1990], pp. 221-40), the tetradrachms with the full legend of Shams in South Arabian characters were examined, together with other classes of ‘Arabian Alexanders’, in 1990 by C. Arnold-Biucchi who knew of five specimens: three from the 1970 Bahrain hoard (O. Mørkholm, "New Coin Finds from Failaka" in Kuml 8 [1972], pp. 183-202; these are now in the Bahrain Museum), one in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and one in the Vienna collection. To these must be added the two pieces in the recently published Huth collection (Huth 106 and 106a). Two of the seven coins (Vienna and Huth 106) show the throne with a back rest, while the others lack this feature.

With D. Potts (The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity. Vol II: From Alexander the Great to the Coming of Islam [Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990]) having convincingly established modern-day Thaj in Eastern Saudi Arabia as the site of the ancient mercantile town of Gerrha, considerable progress in the study of these and related coins has been made with Callot’s ("A New Chronology for the Arabian Alexanders" in CCK, pp. 383-402) publication of a revised chronology for the Arabian Alexanders. According to Callot, Gerrha had already been an important settlement on the trade route connecting the Gulf with South Arabia and India when the Seleukids (Seleukos I and Antiochos I) installed themselves in the north of the Gulf and founded the fortress of Ikaros/Failaka (in modern-day Kuwait). Seleukid power in the region, however, rapidly declined with the beginning of the rule of Seleukos II (246-226), and the famous rebellion of Molon in 222 (just after the accession of Antiochos III) unsettled Seleukid Mesopotamia, causing a breakdown of control over the traditional caravan routes. Gerrha thus became the leading regional power, and asserted its independence by issuing its own coins modelled on Seleukid coinage of Alexander type, but adding the name of the local supreme deity, Shams, in full. Other territories under Gerrhaean influence followed suit, with Ikaros/Failaka producing tetradrachms and obols with a vertical shin, and two otherwise unknown Arab chieftains, Abyatha and Harithat, issuing coins with their own names. Thus started the long series of Alexander imitations, most of which were produced in the name of various queens with the name of Abi’el (cf. Potts and Potts Suppl. for general study of this coinage; cf. M.C.A. Macdonald, "The ‘Abiel’ coins of Eastern Arabia: A study of the Aramaic Legends" in CCK, pp. 403-548, for Abi’el as a female ruler).

Shams/Shamash is a sun-deity of Mesopotamian origin, viewed as a male in Northeast Arabia and a female in South Arabia. While Robin, Mørkholm, Potts, Callot, and Arnold-Biucchi held differing views as to whether the seated figure actually represented the deity, Huth (“Gods and Kings: On the Imagery of Arabian Coinage” in CCK, pp. 107-24) has followed Mørkholm and Robin in associating the figure with the deity.