Dating this early series is problematic.
Meshorer assigned the Athena/Nike
types collectively to
Aretas II, Obodas I, Rabbel I, and
Aretas III, spanning a period from c. 110 to 71 BCE. Karl
Schmitt-Korte argued that the coins were first minted by
Aretas III and may have continued through the reign of
Aretas IV, but admits that further evidence would be required to confirm the theory. (Further evidence, however, suggests otherwise.)
As a footnote: On epigraphic grounds, G. W. Bowersock places Rabbel I as the successor of
Aretas I, somewhat earlier in the second century BCE. (
A Report on Arabia Provincia, The Journal of
Roman Studies
Vol. 61, p. 222-3).
Meshorer et al place him between Obodas I and
Aretas III. Archeological evidence is firm on the dates of Obodas I and
Aretas III's reigns, so if Rabbel I did rule between them, it would have been less than a year. Unfortunately, the
Nabataeans left us barely any written records. We have only archeological evidence and inscriptions from coins and monuments by which to piece together their
history.
According to
Meshorer, the larger, more beautiful coins of
Style I belong to
Aretas II, which suggests the sloppier coins of
Style II may have been minted by Obodas I or a later
king. But both
Aretas II and Obodas I were engaged in warfare against
Alexander Jannaeus, and if these careless coins of
Style II represent emergency
military pay, they could have been minted under the authority of either
king.
Many of these issues present an
inscription on the
reverse, consisting of the the
symbols 
/
(see my examples in post 6).
Meshorer considered these
symbols the
monogram of
Aretas II or
Aretas III. SK supported this idea by pointing out that certain coins of
Aretas III display
his monogram as either
or
, meaning that
and
were interchangeable, and therefore the
on the earlier issues is in fact the Greek letter alpha, standing for
Aretas.
I would add to the argument that this particular
reverse design on
Seleucid coins is usually interpreted as
Nike crowning the
king’s name with a
laurel wreath. If we apply that interpretation to the
Nabataean coins, it adds further credence to the notion that the
inscription /
is the
monogram of
Aretas. The question is: which
Aretas?
Schmitt-Korte rejected
Meshorer’s suggestion that these coins were minted under the authority of
Aretas II, Rabbel I, and Obodas I. He theorized that all the Nike/Athena coins began with
Aretas III and continued through at least the early reign of
Aretas IV, based on the idea that the inscriptions
/
and
are related to the same
king. This may seem like a tenuous connection, but
Meshorer’s own
catalog adds some supporting evidence, however
oblique.
In
Meshorer’s
catalog, plate coin 4 shows the
Nabataean letter heth in place of
. Does this letter date examples of coin 4, or the entire series to a later
king? Heth was used extensively on the bronze coinage of
Aretas IV, as
his monogram. Is it possible that some of these coins were minted by
Aretas IV? Or does the letter merely represent an engraving variation from an earlier period? These are questions that will probably never be answered to anyone’s satisfaction.
Recent discoveries at Tel Beer-Sheva have confirmed Meshorer's
attribution of these coins to earlier rulers. Based on archeological evidence, Alla
Kushnir-Stein and Haim Gitler have suggested the period 135/4-104 BCE as a
terminus post quem for the series (
Numismatic evidence from Tel Beer-Sheva and the beginning of Nabataean coinage,
INJ 12, pp. 16-18). This evidence, however, does not negate the possibility that the coins continued to be minted into the reign of
Aretas IV.
Another aspect of the dating conundrum concerns the now contradicted inclusion of several lead
tesserae in
Meshorer’s and
Schmitt-Korte’s bronze typologies. To what extent are the similar Bust/Nike
tesserae related, if at all, to the bronze coins? But that's a discussion for another post.
