PHILISTIA. Azotos (Ashdod). Circa 420-350 BCE. Rbʾ Šql = Drachm (Silver, 17 mm, 3.59 g, 3 h). Youthful male (?) head to right, hair gathered at the back.
Rev. Facing female head, with 'Egyptianizing' hair or wig; in fields below, 𐡀-𐡔 ('Š in Aramaic); all within dotted square border within incuse square. Gitler & Tal II.8Da = Mildenberg, Palästina, pl. LV, 23 (
this coin). Hendin -. Jeselsohn 19 (
same dies). Shoshana -. Sofaer -. Extremely rare and very likely the finest known example. A beautiful piece with an exceptional rendering of the striking 'woman at the window' motif. Traces of overstriking and with a test cut and a flan fault on the reverse
, otherwise, about extremely fine.
From the collection of Alan Irvin Casden, privately acquired from him in 2003.
The striking female head, with its intense gaze, on the reverse of this magnificent coin may be understood against the background of the well-known 'woman at the window' motif, frequently encountered in Levantine-Phoenician ivory carving of the early 1st millennium BCE (on the motif, see I. J. Winter, The ‘Woman at the Window': Iconography and Inferences of a Motif in First-Millennium B.C. Levantine Ivory Carving, in: J. Aruz and M. Seymour (eds.), Assyria to Iberia: Art and Culture in the Iron Age, New York 2016, pp. 180–193).
The motif is characterized by the frontal presentation of a female head or bust within an architectural frame, often with a heavy Egyptianizing coiffure and a gaze directed straight at the viewer. Its interpretation is not entirely clear: some scholars have seen in it the representation of a goddess, perhaps Astarte, while others have interpreted it as a richly adorned elite woman, a queen, or a female figure with cultic associations.
On the present coin, the Philistine artist has adapted this visual idea to the numismatic medium with remarkable assurance: the 'window' from which the female head, wearing a heavy Egyptianizing wig, confronts the viewer is formed by the dotted square within the quadratum incusum.
