Do you know why Judaea is depicted bigger than the palm?
D.
Bernard Hoenig in
his article "The Other
Side of the Coin" writes this concerning the
reverse type:
"We don’t know who designed the Capta coins. The female figure of Judea may have been inspired by the prophet Jeremiah, who foretold and lived to see the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C. There is a
legend, derived from the Book of Jeremiah, about the prophet meeting a woman dressed in black as the Sanctuary is being razed by the Babylonians. They are on a hilltop overlooking Jerusalem. The woman is weeping. She calls herself 'the Mother of Zion.' Jeremiah consoles her by predicting the rebirth of the
Jewish nation.
Jeremiah opens Lamentations with a portrayal of Judea as a weeping woman:
'How solitary lies the city, once so full of people!
Once great among nations, now become a widow;' "
No reference is made by Hoenig as to why the figure of
Judaea is larger than the
palm on this
type, I suppose it was just a whim of the engraver because other
Judaea Capta types depict the
palm larger.
As far as Hoenig's poetic theory of where the
type comes from, I'm dubious. I don't think it's a stretch to imagine
Roman engravers personifying
Judaea as a woman, many other provinces would be depicted this way. However, it is a stretch to assume that
Roman minting officials knew so much about
Jewish scriptures!