Coinage to Fight the Maccabean Revolt?

Triton XVIII, Lot: 719. Estimate $20000. Sold for $55000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SELEUKID KINGS of SYRIA. Antiochos V Eupator. 164-162 BC. AR Tetradrachm (32mm, 16.18 g, 1h). Ptolemaïs (Ake) mint. Struck 164 BC. Diademed head of Antiochos V as a young child right; AY monogram to left / BAΣIΛEΩΣ ANTIOXOY, Apollo Delphios seated left on omphalos, testing arrow in his right hand, left hand on bow set on ground to right; AY monogram to outer left, NE monogram to outer right, ΛB and HP monograms in exergue. SC 1581a = Houghton & Le Rider II 1 (D1/R1) = CSE 772 (this coin); HGC 9, 751b. Superb EF, toned, hairline flan crack. Very rare, and among the finest known.

Ex Numismatica Genevensis SA V (2 December 2008), lot 139; Arthur Houghton Collection (Numismatic Fine Arts XVIII, 31 March 1987), lot 335.

The unusually youthful portrait on this very rare issue of Ptolemaïs led Houghton and Le Rider to speculate that these tetradrachms may belong to a coregency of Antiochos IV and V during the former's eastern campaign. The absense of the title Eypator from this issue, which would have been assumed by Antiochos V at the time of his father's death, suggests this issue was struck when Antiochos IV was still living. While Antiochos IV was in the east, Lycias, the Seleukid vice regent, was campaigning in Judaea to put down the revolt of the Maccabees, and it is possible that he required coinage to be produced at the mint of Ptolemaïs for this purpose. Interestingly, the monogram on the obverse of this issue, which is different from all other obverse controls at Ptolemaïs, could be resolved as the first letters of Lysias's name.