Jewish Shekels and other Coins of Ancient Judea. 443 



ence to two distinct portions of the city, one superior to the 

 other — the latter not being fully in possession of Simon Macca- 

 basus till the second year of his issue of coined money ; but 

 this is an improbable straining after a meaning which cannot, 

 I think, be accepted. I would rather accept it as an expression 

 of the genitive, which would have more plausibility, as being in 

 accordance with the usual Greek form of numismatic inscrip- 

 tions. This, however, I think is also inadmissible. I have, 

 therefore, taken the inscription as it stands on the shekels of 

 the first year, without the Iod, and supplied the n {heh), 

 which is omitted in the inscription of coins of the first year. 

 There are many difficulties connected with the interpretation 

 of monetary inscriptions in the ancient Hebrew characters, 

 commonly, but incorrectly, termed Samaritan. This old form 

 of character had long been disused except for certain monu- 

 mental purposes, and, from its infrequent adoption, it is not 

 unlikely that blunders were sometimes made by mechanical 

 engravers, just such as we find on our own mediaeval coinage.* 

 More especially so at a time when the old letters were very 

 suddenly called into more general use for the first Judaic 

 coinage, to which it was thus sought to impart a national cha- 

 racter. That such a revival of the ancient alphabet should 

 have been adopted for such a purpose appears natural, when it 

 is considered that the style of the square Hebrew (as it is 

 termed) was formed during the captivity, and therefore bore 

 the stamp, as it were, of the slavery (as having been acquired 

 in Assyria. It was sometimes called Assurith) from which the 

 nation had just been rescued by the ruin of its oppressors 

 consequent upon the Asiatic conquests of Alexander. Among 

 the difficulties which occur in interpreting inscriptions in these 

 characters, as used by engravers who but imperfectly under- 

 stood their value, is the following, which has not, that I am 

 aware, been noticed by numismatists : — I have often doubted 

 whether the aspirate heh, as a definite and separate character, 

 existed in the most ancient form of that alphabet. Conse- 

 quently it is not easy to decide whether the character repre- 

 sented (in the deciphered inscription at page 332 of the last 

 December part of this publication) by the English equivalents 

 12 and 13, and 21 and 22, be a heh, followed by a non- written 

 vowel a (w), or whether it be a form of the old Hebrew S carry- 

 ing with it its own aspirate. The form of the character is very 

 like the ancient form of aleph reversed and set upright, as for 



* Even in the Jewish series many obvious blunders of the engraver occur — for 

 instance, on a coin of Herod the Great we find HE, the Latin R having been 

 erroneously substituted for the Greek, and as in the coin struck on the reduction 

 of Jerusalem to the form of a Eoman colony, the word Capitolina is spelt 

 KAPITOLINA, with a Greek Kappa. 



