Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > Greek Coins Discussion Forum

tyre shekel???

(1/1)

Salem Alshdaifat:
this coin seems to be overstike , you van see at the edge like letters, at obv it is like many strikes which make it very smooth, what you think that the over strike was?
salem

Salem Alshdaifat:
closer look

Salem Alshdaifat:
tyre 3

Robert_Brenchley:
It looks like one of the barbs struck by the Jews when there was a shortage of official shekels. Its an interesting example of the complexities of religion; they had to pay the Temple tax in pure silver, and the shekels were probably minted specifically for this. When the supply ran short, they had to produce their own pure silver coins, and simply imitated the Tyrian type, despite the fact that it had an image of their god, Melkart, and the Jews weren't (in theory) supposed to use images.

If some of them can be identified as overstrikes, it might tell us something about the origin of the silver, as they had no source of their own, and were likely to be reworking something.

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