Need Help With I.d. And Translation - Aha! | Horned Moses

It is an Arab / Islamic coin and it is turned up side down.

Thanks for posting the other side. That portrait doesn't really look like anything I've seen in the Ancient series, except perhaps early Parthian coins like this one. I did find this one with a similar basic design, but the artwork is much cruder, and those "horns" are indeed strange.

From just the reverse, and description of the obverse, I thought it might be a mediaeval Islamic coin with a portrait copied off an old Greek or Roman coin, but seeing it now it looks too "classical" to be an Islamic copy.

We're looking fro somewhere that used good, well-formed "classical" Greek-style portraits and a definitely non-Greek language. I'm stumped.

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Looks HEBREW...an ancient coin of Israel!

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That was YosemiteGold's first theory, too (which he has since edited away). But while the script does look Hebrew (or at least from one of the Semitic alphabets), it looks almost entirely unlike an ancient Jewish coin.

First off, if it's Hebrew, it's modern Hebrew - ancient Hebrew letters looked different enough to be noticeable even on a coin that well worn.

Secondly, the Jews interpreted the commandment "no graven images" to include prohibiting placing pictures of humans or animals on coinage. Ancient Jewish coins (and indeed, most modern Israeli coins) tend to only show plants and inanimate objects (cups, musical instruments, etc). While they were happy enough to use "unlawful" and even overtly pagan money in everyday trade, coins they made themselves (such as during the First and Second Jewish Revolts) never used portraits. In short, no coin with Hebrew writing on one side should have a portrait like that on the other.

Check out this page from Wildwinds and you'll see what I mean, about the lettering and the lack of portraits - all the portrait coins on that page were issued by the Romans, and use either Latin or Greek script.

I'm beginning to think this is some kind of modern fantasy, perhaps designed to look kind-of-ancient.

Octavian (a.k.a. Roman emperor Augustus) was clean shaven, as was the fashion in 1st century Rome, so whoever this is supposed to be, it isn't him.

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I'm beginning to think this is some kind of modern fantasy, perhaps designed to look kind-of-ancient.

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That was my initial reaction. Could the horns suggest some kind of satanic talisman?

Well, the first difficulty with translating it is recognising the language. Once that can be determined, we can start to try to translate it. Of course, if it's a fantasy piece, it may not even be an actual language, only meaningless squiggles.

But let's not give up hope. The language it looks most like is Hebrew, so let's have a go at applying the modern Hebrew alphabet to this coin.

Here's what I come up with:


Most of the letters are only my best-guesses, with several possible options for each slot; if it's Hebrew, it's not clear Hebrew. I'd assume folks like Giladzuc, who's from Israel, would have been quickly able to tell if the words and lettering obviously made sense to them.

The Romans did make Provincial coinage for the Judaean territory, but such coinage always used the Greek alphabet, never Hebrew, and they were sensitive enough to not use portraits of any kind on the coinage (though the emperor was usually named). Here's a classic example, a prutah or "widow's mite" taken from the Wildwinds link I posted to earlier, from the time of Pontius Pilate (circa 29 AD), and naming Emperor Tiberius:

As you can imagine, this series is very popular with "biblical coin" collectors, and is well studied.

Well done, YG! That's it, alright.

Never would have guessed the horned guy is supposed to be Moses.

So ID confirmed, but still many mysteries remain. Although we know it has to originate from the middle ages, and an example was known as early as the mid-1600's, we don't know who made the original silver medals, or why, or how old this copper example might be.

Since we now know it's not ancient (and therefore hasn't been buried for centuries, dig up and then cleaned) it's reasonable to assume that the general fuzziness and graininess is an indication that this piece has been cast. The indistinct lettering might indicate it's a copy of a copy of a copy, so it may even be of fairly modern manufacture.