Skip to main content
No AccessARTICLES

THE LILY AND THE ROSE: A Review of Some Hasmonean Coin Types

David Jacobson, with doctorates in classical archaeology and materials science, has headed materials R&D groups in British industry and taught Roman architecture and the Jews of the classical age at London University. David is an Honorary Research Fellow at UCL and editor of Palestine Exploration Quarterly. He has published Below the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (1996), Hellenistic Paintings of Marisa (2007), and co-edited Herod and Augustus (2009) and Judaea and Rome in Coins (2012). In recent years David's research has focused on ancient Jewish coins, placing them in a wider Mediterranean perspective.

Following the fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great in 539 b.c.e., Judah was reconstituted as an administrative unit of the Persian Empire. It maintained its semi-autonomous status under the leadership of the high priests of Jerusalem until Alexander the Great's conquest of the southern Levant in 333/332 b.c.e., when Judah passed to Macedonian control. It was relatively late during the period of Persian dominion, sometime between 375 and 333 b.c.e., that Yehud began to issue its own coinage in the form of minute silver pieces. One coin type features a stylized lily. Flowers reappear on later Judean issues, and scholars have generally taken it more or less for granted that these, too, are lilies. This article will demonstrate that the flower on several of the coins struck by Hasmonaean rulers of Judea in the latter part of the second—first century b.c.e. is, in fact, a rose modeled on the floral emblem of the island state of Rhodes. Possible reasons for this particular choice will be presented and explained.