JUDAEA, Hellenistic Period (Yehud). Yeḥizqiyah (Hezekiah), circa 320-312 BCE (?). 1/4 Obol (Silver, 7 mm, 0.17 g, 4 h). [Youthful male head facing slightly to right on Macedonian shield]. Rev. 𐤄𐤐𐤇𐤄 - 𐤉𐤇𐤆𐤒𐤉𐤄 ('Hezekiah, the governor' in Paleo-Hebrew) Owl standing right, head facing. Bromberg I 3. Hendin 10. Jeselsohn 105 ff. Meshorer, AJC, 10. Samel 2006. Shoshana I 20075. Sofaer 18-20. YC Type 24 (O12/R15). Attractive iridescent toning and with an exceptionally complete reverse. The obverse struck fully off center, otherwise, good very fine.



Yeḥizqiyah is the most prominently attested named issuing authority in the late fourth-century coinage of Yehud. On the present specimen, both his name, YḤZQYH, and his title, HPḤH ('the governor'), are exceptionally clear, providing unusually direct evidence for his official authority. Gitler, Lorber, and Fontanille interpret the renewed appearance of name and title as indicating that Yeḥizqiyah had been formally confirmed, or reconfirmed, in office and that his authority was delegated by a higher political power. The male head set within a Macedonian shield (here off flan) gives the issue an explicitly military character, and the authors suggest that this coinage may have been struck to pay military or paramilitary units.

Dated approximately to 320-312 BCE, the issue belongs to the turbulent age of the Diadochi, when Judaea lay at a strategic junction between Egypt and the territories contested first in the struggles involving Ptolemy and Perdikkas, and later between the Ptolemies and the Antigonids. Numismatic evidence suggests that Yeḥizqiyah’s career extended across the transition from Achaemenid to Macedonian rule, making him a rare example of a local official who may have retained authority through successive imperial regimes.

The authors regard his identification with the elderly high priest Hezekiah mentioned by Pseudo-Hecataeus and Josephus (Pseudo-Hecataeus, apud Josephus, Contra Apionem 1.184–189) as plausible and highly attractive, though the discrepancy between the titles 'governor' and 'high priest' remains unresolved. They therefore allow either that the literary tradition misrepresented a secular governor as a high priest, or that Yeḥizqiyah may eventually have combined the highest civil and priestly offices. On their reconstruction, he left Judaea in late 312 or early 311 BCE, probably as a deportee under Ptolemy I, after which the coinage appears to reflect a period of administrative instability.