ALEXANDER THE GREAT COIN ~ SAUDI ARABIA

 

Eastern Arabia. Gerrha. 230-220 BCE.

The makers of this coin were mitating the coin types of Alexander the Great . Head of young Herakles , wearing lion skin / Shams seated l. on throne holding eagle and scepter, ΣΒΥ (Shams )in South Arabian script, and  Greek script ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΥ   (of king  Alexander ).

This rare tetradrachm is one of the earliest Arabian coin issues struck by the caravan city of Gerrha in what is now Saudi Arabia. Exposure of the rulers and people of Gerrha to the international trade coinage of Alexander the Great led to the adoption and reinterpretation of his Herakles and Zeus types for themselves. Here, the God on the reverse is clean shaven and youthful, reflecting contemporary Arab fashion rather than Greek tradition, and is clearly identified by the South Arabian legend as the Arab god Shams, rather than Greek Zeus. Shams was a sun god derived from the Mesopotamian god Shamash. In Eastern Arabia Shams was regularly understood as a young male deity, following old Mesopotamian custom, while in the south Shams was understood to be female. The tetradrachm reflects the multicultural character of Arabia in the third century BCE, standing as it did at the crossroads of the Seleucid Empire that succeeded the vast Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great and Mesopotamia, whose civilization was already very old when Alexander arrived, as well as the ability and willingness of the ancient Arabs to adapt features of these foreign cultures for their own use. Even the inscription naming Shams is borrowed in that it is a South Arabian script used by Eastern Arabs who more commonly wrote in Aramaic. As such, the use of this script as well as the reinterpretation of Zeus as Shams places a strongly Arab stamp onto an otherwise ubiquitous Greek coin type.