Ancient Greek (Classical, The Levant). “Middle Levantine” Series. Silver Obol or “Ma’eh” (8mm, 0.57 g, 12h). Struck in Samaria, c. 4th cent. BCE.
Obv: Laureate male head right with light beard; dotted border.
Rev: Female head left with headdress (and earring?); legend off flan: šmryn (see Sofaer 58).
Refs: Meshorer & Qedar (1991) 71 = Samaria Hoard 165 = Athena Fund II 972 (this coin illustrated); Meshorer & Qedar (1999) 187 = Wyssmann (2019) MQ187.i (this coin cited). See Also: Ariel 2016: p. 17 & 28-3 (Table 2, p. 56).
Provenance: Ex-Samaria Hoard (before 1990, CH 8.587 = CH 9.413), No. 165; Athena Fund Sale (Part II, Sotheby’s, 27 Oct 1993), Lot 972; Stack’s (3-4 Dec 1996), Lot 708 (part); Jay M. Galst (1950-2020) Collection (his tag illustrated); Triton XXV Online Session (11 Jan 2022), Lot 6169.
Notes: Coin in hand video (LINK). This coin was the first of its type published (first in Meshorer & Qedar’s 1991 The Coinage of Samaria in the Fourth Century BCE). A second was sold by Sternberg in 1994 (later acc. into Israel Mus., 2013). These remained the only known specimens when Meshorer & Qedar’s updated 1999 volume on Samarian Coinage was published. Before that time Samarian coinage was largely an uncharted area, but has grown exponentially. By 2019, Wyssmann was able to catalog at least 11 known specimens, the remained only published since 2010.