Coin Denominations and Weight Standards in Fourth-Century BCE Palestine 1

Abstract

Epigraphic material of the fourth century BCE and other written sources are surveyed in order to identify the weight denominations and standards of contemporaneous Palestinian coins. It was found that there were probably local denominational systems and weight standards in the region, and that these were apparently based on the sheqel and its fractions. The Greek (Attic) denominational system and weight standard formerly associated with the coins were probably not known in Palestine. This essay scrutinizes references to Greek (Attic) weight denominations and standards in fourth-century BCE Palestinian coins in modern scholarship. Careful examination of the contemporaneous epigraphic material at hand, however, suggests that it is best to view the coins of Edom (?), Judah, Samaria and Philistia as based upon a sheqel standard (Fig. 1).

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.