Triton XVII, Lot: 404. Estimate $15000. Sold for $75000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ARABIA, Southern. Qataban. Yad'ab Dhubyan Yuhargib. Circa 155-135 BC. AR Tetradrachm (22mm, 16.22 g, 11h). Male head with curly hair right; yd’ab dbyn bn[?...] (“Yad’ab Dhubyan, son of […]” in South Arabian letters) above / Bearded male head left, with hair tied around ending in a knot; mlk qtbn (“king of Qataban” in South Arabian) above, so-called ‘oblong symbol’ and Royal Qatabanian monogram to left. Unpublished. Good VF, light even gray toning. Beautiful style. Unique and of great importance.

The Qatabanian series with two male heads (cf. Huth 358-385) stands between the earlier coins in imitation of Athens (for a hybrid type, cf. Huth 357) and the emergence of Himyarite coinage in the late first century BC. These coins bear the names of a number of mostly unknown rulers, and abound with monograms. As the ruler’s name can be found on either the obverse (as on this coin) or the reverse (Huth 366-367), it is unclear to which of the two distinctly different heads it refers, and who the respective other head represents. While the present coin is stylistically close to other coins in the name of the same ruler (cf. Huth 359), it seems to add a patronym (Yad’ab Dhubyan, son of…).

All previously known coins from this series are hemidrachms, and the present coin is the first ever tetradrachm of this type. Given the unsolved questions posed by the series as a whole, and the sudden emergence of a new and heavy denomination long after the issuing of Athenian type tetradrachms had come to an end, this coin is obviously of great importance for the study of ancient South Arabian coinage.