Notes on some puzzling legends on seventh-century Arab-Byzantine coinage

Woods, David

Notes on some puzzling legends on seventh-century Arab-Byzantine coinage

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WoodsNotesonLegendsofArabByzantineCoinage2017.pdf(1.69 MB)

Published Version

Date

2017-03

Authors

Woods, David

Publisher

Archetype Publications

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine some of the more puzzling Greek legends on Arab-Byzantine coins of the so-called Imperial Image phase in order to suggest new understandings or readings of the same. One of the key characteristics of coins of the Imperial Image phase that serves to distinguish them from coins of the preceding Pseudo-Byzantine stage is that they begin to display literate new legends in Greek, and sometimes Arabic also, chiefly the names of the mints, but also statements of quality or validity. Nevertheless, some apparently garbled legends do appear in this phase also. In what follows, I will attempt to demonstrate that some of these may make more sense than initially seems to be the case. In other cases, I will attempt simply to explain the origin of the garbled legends.

Keywords

Damascus , Gerasa , Heliopolis , Jerusalem , Thaanach

Citation

Woods, D. (2017) 'Notes on some puzzling legends on seventh-century Arab-Byzantine coinage', in Goodwin, T. (ed.) Coinage and History in the Seventh-Century Near East, 5: Proceedings of the 15th Seventh Century Syrian Numismatic Round Table held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 17th and 18th September 2016. London: Archetype Publications, pp. 109-18.