Historical studies

30
56. The coins of Iviga, the Roman Ebusus, are
well known. They bear on one side, or both, a full-
faced figure of a god holding serpents. As the
inscription is in Phoenician, the god has been termed
Baal by the numismatists. But it is perfectly plain
that he is the god known to the Egyptians as Bes or
Besa. He has the diverging feathers on the head,
the broad face and beard, the hand on the hip, the
short thigh, and the bent legs, which are all familiar
in figures of this
god.
The inscrip-
tion gives the
name of the island
in Phoenician as
AIBSA. Ai is the
regular Semitic
for island, and the
name thus is " the
island of Besa."
The classical
forms of Ebousos
and Ebusus, are
as near as such transcriptions usually attain ;
THE ISLAND OF BESA
THE ISLAND OF BESA.
By U-. M. FLINDERS PETRIE.
and the
modern Ivi^a is even nearer to the original, when we
remember that the beth was a v, and the Spanish
does not distinguish l? from 'j now.
57. Bes was originally of African origin, and was
brought up the Red Sea into Egypt from Ta-neter, or
Punt Hence wc cannot suppose that he came from
Ivi^a originally. The name must have been given
by the Phoenician traders, though there is no evidence
for a worship of Bes in Phoenicia. Is it possible that
there was a fusion of the dwarf Ptah and 13es? They
were similar in deformity, and the dwarf Ptah was
carried on the prows of the Phoenician triremes, as
Herodotos states (iii, 37). These figures were cer-
tainly of Ptah, as they were " the Phoenician Pataiki,"
which is clearly the same root as Ptah. But possibly
Bes was worshipped
as a
variant of this
type.
The figures
on the coins are
a late variety of
the god. In early
times and down
to the xviiith
dynasty the pen-
dent tail is shewn;
but in the
xxvith dynasty
and Roman times the tail is omitted very generally,
as on the coins. He is sometimes shewn holding
serpents in Egypt, though this was not his usual
type. The abundance of Egyptian amulets and
scarabs of the xxvith dynasty found in Sardinia
shews that it is in this age that the connexion of
Bes with Ivica is most probable.
THE ROMAN COINAGE OF ALEXANDRIA.
58. The Nature of t/ie Currency!. During the last
few years several hoards of tetradrachms struck at
Alexandria under the Roman emperors, have come
into my hands from different sources in Egypt : and
the statistics as to the composition of these hoards
which I have been able to collect provide some
material of interest as bearing on the activity of the
Alexandrian mint at different periods.
By J. G. MILNE.
It should be premised that, from the time of
the conquest of Egypt by Augustus to the monetary
reform of Diocletian, the tctradrachm was the most
important coin ordinarily circulating in Egypt. It
was nominally of silver, but actually very debased :
the earliest examples struck under Roman rule, in
21 A.D., contain about 50 per cent, of silver ; the
latest in 296 A.D., less than i per cent. The