PHILISTIA. Azotos (Ashdod). Circa 420-350 BCE. Rbʾ Šql = Drachm (Silver, 15 mm, 3.81 g, 6 h). Janiform head composed of a bearded male head to left and a female head to right. Rev. Forepart of a recumbent bovine right, its horns forming a crescent, an owl concealed within its body; before, 𐡃 (D in Aramaic); all within dotted square border within incuse square. Gitler & Tal II.7Da (this coin). Hendin -. Jeselsohn 17 (same obverse die). Shoshana -. Sofaer -. Extremely rare and undoubtedly the finest of a very few known examples. Beautifully toned and with a wonderful reverse. The obverse struck slightly off center and with a minor test cut on the reverse, otherwise, good very fine.



As in lots 4 and 5 above, the bull’s head is here likewise to be read as a pictographic aleph, yielding the ethnic ʾ[Š]D. Particularly noteworthy – and, to our knowledge, hitherto unnoticed in the scholarship – is the rendering of the bull’s horns as a crescent. Whether intended as a purely formal device or as a sacral allusion, the motif resonates with a well-established ancient Near Eastern association between the bull, the crescent, and the lunar sphere, especially in connection with the moon god Sîn/Nanna. The type may therefore play simultaneously on letter, image, and cultic symbol: the ox-head as aleph, the ox as emblem, and its horns as a lunar crescent.