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Elymais drachm

Started by Pellinore, April 02, 2024, 10:33:31 AM

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Pellinore

Here's one of these nice late Elymais drachms. I bought it because of its appealing impression, both persons look good-humoured and friendly. But also because of the lettering, you rarely see texts on Elymais drachms. According to Van 't Haaff this is the ruler Orodes V and it says his name: Orodes King. I'm sure some of you can read it letter for letter. In the book this coin is numbered 1-1B (page 143).

AE drachm Elymais. Orodes V. King's profile t.l. with headband. Text at its left side. Rev. Female head to the left. 15 mm, 2.63 gr.

1426 ew.jpg

-- Paul

JMP

Hello Pellinore, interesting coin!
Using the Elymaic alphabet, I think one can read (top to bottom):

"r ? d, m l k 5"

Possibly: Orod malik 5 (the fifth king Orodes)
I assume the letter after (= under) "kap" is "he", the fifth letter in the alphabet.
Comparing with Hebrew: "heh" is the fifth letter in the Hebrew alphabet and it is used as "5".

After all, it is good you told us what there has to be on the coin, to be able to puzzle this together ;) !



Pellinore

Thank you very much, JMP. I'm surprised the Elymaeans may have used the number 5 on their coins. That's unusual, isn't it?
-- Paul

JMP

I admit, it is kind of a strange guess ::)  :) .
But yes, there is something after "malik", one character... what can it be ?

britanico

Elymaean characters are now available in Unicode. Here is the legend on your drachm in Noto Sans Elymaic built with help from the Aksharamukha Script Converter.

𐿥𐿳𐿥𐿣 𐿬𐿫𐿪𐿠

From right to left it reads Orodes King. That last letter is an Aleph - a long A.

JMP

Yesterday, February 1 and the first Saturday of the month, means my visiting day of the Numismatic Club of Dendermonde.
One of the purchases was this:

Elymais Drachm of Kamaskires V, struck in Seleucia on the Hedyphon (54-32 BC):

Kamnaskires

Quote from: JMP on February 02, 2025, 04:43:24 PMElymais Drachm of Kamaskires V

Nice one. I just published an article about an interesting (unusual) coin attributed to this king.

JMP

This is Wikipedia's comment on Kamnaskires V in their "List of Elymais Kings":

Kamnaskires

Yes, since "Kamnaskires" was used as an honorific by the kings of the Kamnaskirid Dynasty (so that personal names were not engraved on coins), determining the royal chronology - and which coins should be associated with which Kamnaskires - has been challenging and much debated. I discuss this in the new article in KOINON VII. However, to be clear, most contemporary authors (Elymaean scholars) consider Kamnaskires V to have been the final ruler of the Later Kamnaskirid Dynasty. After his reign, the transition to Arsacid rule in Elymais began.

Figleaf

@Kamnaskires is your article available online?

Peter
An unidentified coin is a piece of metal. An identified coin is a piece of history.

JMP

Trying if I could find it, I was only able to read the title of Kamnaskires' article in Koinon VIIs' table of contents  :-\ .

Kamnaskires

It's only available, in paperback and PDF versions, for sale at this time.
https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803279152