jahrbuch numismatik geldgeschichte - Bayerische Numismatische ...

20 J.Elayi, A.G.Elayinames, maybe militaryn. Nothing in the present state of knowledge of Aradianhistory can support such an hypothesis. Moreover, it is based an a poorknowledge of socio-political structures of Phoenician cities in the Persianperiod. It has also been proposed that these abbreviations represent the purposeof the issue or abbreviations of magistrates' names". This is not impossible,eventhough other hypotheses can also been proposed. These letterscould represent figures4° since they present an almost continuous sequence(Y, K, M, N, S, `, P, with L missing). However, ' has no place in this sequence.Eventhough not impossible, it seems unlikely to have used twosystems of dating for the same coinage at the same period, all the more sosince dating by letters is not attested before the Hellenistic period. Becauseof low dates traditionally admitted for Aradian coinage, the possibility of interpretingthese abbreviations as those of nine kings' names for so short aperiod has been excluded. This proposal must be reconsidered. We proposehigh dates for classifying Aradian coins because the series with profile eyemost likely begins at the beginning of the IVth century41. The coins bearingletter G followed or not by a number are the last ones of the series42. Sincewe know from classical sources that the king of Arwad in 33343 wasGerostratos (GRSTRT, Ger'agtart), letter G could be the initial of thisking's name. If the number represents the year of rule, this king would haveruled about seven years. If the first king who wrote his initial also issued thefirst groups of the series, there are about sixty years left for eight rules. Weget an average of about 7/8 years per rule, which is somewhat short butpossible44.King Geragtart seems to have differenciated not only his issues from thoseof the previous kings by the initial of his name, but also each of his issuesby adding a number for the regnal year. The group M'G would represent38 Betlyon, op. cit., pp. 108-109, n. 104.39 Babelon, Traite II 2, p. 527. The existence of representative bodies in parallel to royal powercan support such hypotheses.40 BMC Phoenicia, p. XXIV.41 Cf. Elayi-Elayi, loc. cit.: the borrowings from Athenian numismatic art are explicit enoughfor dating the change of the full eye into the profile eye from Athenian modeln; P. Naster,„Les influences du style grec en Phenicie ä l'epoque achemenide", in Atti de settimo Congressointern. di Archeologia classica (Roma, 1961), p. 331, is one of the rare numismatistsfavourable to high dates.42 On this subject, cf. Elayi-Elayi, ibid.43 Arrianus, Anabasis, II, 13.44 From our analysis of the Aradian treasure and the quantity of coins for each group, thegroup with M" could have preceded the group with M'G. Since Ger`agiart's son was called`Abd`gtart, his grandfather could have had the same name because the use of papponymywas not rare among the Western Semites at that time: cf. for ex. F.M. Cross, „A Reconstructionof the Judean Restoration", JBL 94 (1975), pp. 4-18, and in particular 6-7.