The Ancient Coinage of Southern Arabia (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The Ancient Coinage of Southern Arabia Hitherto the coins of Southern Arabia have always been classed together as 'Himyarite'. It will be seen that the greater part of them must be divided between Sabaeans and Himyarites, and also that there is ground for distinguishing two small groups of coins, one attributable to the Minaeans, the other to the Katabanians (people of Kataban), although this latter group can only be regarded as subordinate to the main Himyarite series. Three out of the four tribes mentioned by Strabo are thus provided with a coinage. Since the rise of the Himyarites to power probably did not take place before the middle of the second century B.C., when their capital at Sapphar regia (Sqfar, near Yerim) superseded the old Sabaean capital at Mariaba (Marib the earliest series of the coins with which we are concerned should strictly be regarded as Sabaean rather than Himyarite. Nevertheless, the chronology is so uncertain, and the series are interlaced in so curious a way, that it is very difficult to draw any line between them. Roughly speaking, we may assume that the earliest coins, which are direct imitations of the earlier Attic coinage, belong to the Sabaean period, while the later, flat coins (of that which we may for convenience call the Sana class), 1 with a reverse type derived from the Attic coinage of the New Style, the small coins with names and heads of various kings, and the bucranium series must certainly belong to the Himyarite period. But there are certain single coins, or small groups, which, although in fabric and types they look fairly early, seem by their monograms and inscriptions to be intimately connected with the Sana class, apparently so much later. The following is an attempt at a provisional classification of the various series. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.