SAMARIA. Series with personal names and miscellaneous letters. Delayah (?), governor of Samaria, circa 407-380/70 BCE. Rbʾ Šql = Drachm (Silver, 14 mm, 4.20 g, 6 h). Bridled horse standing left; in upper right field, 𐡃 or 𐡓 (D or R in Aramaic); all within square guilloche-pattern border. Rev. Bearded, royal-headed winged sphinx seated to left; in upper right field, 𐡃 or 𐡓 (D or R in Aramaic); all within square guilloche-pattern border within incuse square. CSC 87a (this coin). Hendin 6035 (same dies). Jeselsohn 40 (same dies). Meshorer & Qedar 28 = Sofaer 116 (same dies). NH -. Shoshana -. Wyssmann p. 253, MQ 28. Extremely rare and the finest known example. Boldly struck, beautifully toned and with excellent detail. Small die break on the obverse, otherwise, good extremely fine.



This remarkable drachm belongs to a series of Samarian coins bearing the legend D/RY or D/R, the reading being complicated by the difficult distinction between 𐡃 and 𐡓. Eshel read the legend as DY and associated it with Delayah, a son of Sanballat known from the Aramaic Elephantine papyri; Sanballat was the Persian-period governor of Samaria (Eshel 2007, pp. 228-229, see also lots 122-124 above). Delayah, written in Aramaic as 𐡃𐡋𐡉𐡄, appears there in a specific political context. When the Jewish military colony at Elephantine in Egypt sought permission to rebuild its temple of YHW (Yahweh) after its destruction, it addressed its appeal in 407 BCE not only to Bagohi, governor of Judah, but also to 'Delayah and Shelemyah, the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria' (TAD A4.7). Delayah’s standing is made still clearer by the related memorandum TAD A4.9, which opens: 'Memorandum of what Bagohi and Delayah said.' Delayah thus appears alongside the Judean governor as an authority whose approval or recommendation carried weight in the affairs of the Elephantine community.

The identification of the coin legend with this Delayah remains a numismatic hypothesis (for a coin tentatively assigned to his brother Shelemyah, see lot 129 below), but it is historically plausible. The Sanballat family is one of the few Samarian elites of the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE documented in both literary and epigraphic sources. Sanballat himself is known from Nehemiah as 'the Horonite' and is explicitly described in the Elephantine papyri as governor of Samaria (see lot 122 above). The fact that his sons Delayah and Shelemyah appear as addressees in 407 BCE suggests that they were already involved in the administration, perhaps acting on behalf of their aging father or preparing for succession in office.

A further, though fragmentary, piece of evidence comes from the Wadi Daliyeh finds. Bulla WD 22 has been plausibly reconstructed by Jan Dušek as the seal of a Delayah/Delayahu, son of Sanballat, governor of Samaria. Since the inscription is damaged, this cannot be presented as certain proof; nevertheless, the proposed reading fits remarkably well with the Elephantine evidence. Delayah is therefore often understood in scholarship as the presumed successor of Sanballat in the governorship of Samaria, with a period of activity extending roughly from 407 BCE into the early fourth century BCE.

If the legend of the present drachm is indeed to be connected with Delayah, the coin would not be merely an anonymous local issue of Samaria. It would belong to the milieu of a historically identifiable governor’s family whose names stand at the intersection of biblical tradition, Aramaic administrative practice, Persian provincial politics, and Samarian coinage. This is what makes the series so compelling: our coins (lots 125-128) may preserve a name that becomes tangible within the major political and religious tensions of the late Achaemenid period, from Jerusalem and Samaria to Elephantine on the southern Nile.