+ԿԱՐՈՂՈՒԹ' - ԻՒՆՆ ԱՅ Ե

+ՀԵԹՈՒՄ ԹԱԳԱՒՈՐ ՀԱՅՈՑ

Though the Hetoum-Zabel drams are undated, typical of most Cilician coinage, one can chronologically organize them by the degeneration of style. This specimen is Bedoukian 842, the first Hetoum-Zabel type dram in the corpus, indicating VERY early issue. This particular specimen not only bears the fineness of the earlier issues, but also surpasses them. Perhaps it was and extremely skilled die engraver who did this. On the obverse, the king and queen are slightly worn, but show great depth, not seen on these issues. On the reverse, the lion is quite impressive. For one, he is done in depth and realistically. Also, the head is rather extraordinary: the crown is attractive and not of usual design. Furthermore, the nose is intact and attractive, quite a rarity. Typically, even if the nose is intact, it is rather long and ugly. Finally, the quality of the inscription is very high, also atypical for this type. It is of interest to note the 2 specimens of this type [842] in Bedoukian's book had purities of 90 and 95% and weights of 2.88 and 3.00 grams. Die match to this specimen.