**1. Introduction**

Analysis of the chemical composition of ancient coins can reveal their alloy content and enable us to determine, among other things, whether certain issues were produced using a controlled and relatively homogenous metallurgical composition. Moreover, the elemental composition of a coin, when compared to a validated dataset, may indicate where that coin was produced [1].

The study of the Provincial silver coinage of Judah was recently revised by Gitler et al. (2023) [2], who presented a typological corpus of the 44 recorded Yehud coin types, as well as a die study of the coins dated to the Late Persian, Macedonian, and Early Hellenistic periods. Here, we present an archaeometallurgical study of some of the more common coin types of the Yehud minting authority (Types 5, 16, 24, and 31) (Figure 1).

Type 5 of the Yehud coinage series (Figure 2) features a helmeted head of Athena in profile, turned to the right on the obverse, while the reverse depicts an owl with the body turned to the right and its head facing front. An olive spray or lily appears in the upper left field, while in the right field, the legend YHD (an abbreviation of the name of the province: Judah) is written in Paleo-Hebrew and Aramaic. These Athenian-styled *gerah* denomination-based issues (1/20 of a local Judahite sheqel; mean weight of 0.48 g based on a sample of 150 coins) were minted in the province of Judah during the Late Persian period between 350 and 333 BCE (see [2]: Chapter III).

**Citation:** Cohen, M.; Ashkenazi, D.; Gitler, H.; Tal, O. Archaeometallurgical Analysis of the

Provincial Silver Coinage of Judah: More on the Chaîne Opératoire of the Minting Process. *Materials* **2023**, *16*, 2200. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ma16062200

Academic Editors: Andrea Di Schino and Claudio Testani

Received: 13 February 2023 Revised: 6 March 2023 Accepted: 7 March 2023 Published: 9 March 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

With Type 5, the Yehud coinage began a specialization in small denominations in contrast to the larger denominations that had been previously minted for this province (Types 1–4 in the Yehud corpus). Our initial research question was: can we determine with sufficient certainty whether our die-linked issues were not only produced according to a specific standard of metallurgical composition, but also from the same metal batch throughout the minting of the series?

Our study then took this question a step further and sought to determine whether the die-linked issues of Type 5 (Figure 3), which all feature the same obverse (O1) but with five different reverses (R1, R2, R3, R4, and R5), were produced from different metal batches or from the same specific batch that had been used to produce the flans for the entire Type 5 group which is connected to Obverse 1 (O1/R1, O1/R2, O1/R3, O1/R4, and O1/R5 are shown in Figures 2–4). Basically, we sought answers that relate to the chaîne opératoire of the earliest small denomination coins minted in the province of Judah.

Similarly, to other Yehud small denomination coins, Type 5 was struck from dies that were damaged during the striking process but continued to be used (progressive degradation of O1, see [2]: Figure II.1, p. 22). The die damage could have been caused by excessive wear, breaks, or errors. In this peculiar chaîne opératoire, the artisans who struck the coins apparently operated independently of local die engravers and thus were not able to replace the damaged dies or to recut the motifs in order to repair them. Consequently, the damaged obverse dies continued to be used and to produce coins whose obverse motifs are barely discernable [3].

**Figure 1.** Location map of the research area, showing the fourth-century BCE regional division of southern Palestine.

**Figure 2.** Yehud *gerah* coins—Type 5 of the Yehud series (Athena/Owl) corpus with die combinations O1 (obverse) and R1 (reverse), R2, R3, R4, and R5 ((**a**–**e**), respectively) with the YHD legend.

**Figure 3.** Multi-focal light microscope (LM) enlarged observation of the Yehud *gerah* coins Type 5 die-linked connection, with the same obverse (O1) but different reverses (R1, R2, and R4): (**a**) O1/R1: IAA 138139 (Khirbat Qeiyafa excavations), obverse, showing the helmeted head of Athena; (**b**) O1/R1: IAA 138139, reverse, showing a lily, symbol of Jerusalem (left), owl (center), and Aramaic inscription of Judea (YHD, right); (**c**) O1/R1: IMJ 34542, reverse; (**d**) O1/R2: IMJ 34537, reverse; (**e**) O1/R2: IAA 154383 (Khirbat Qeiyafa); (**f**) O1/R2: IMJ 34538, reverse; (**g**) O1/R4: Ramallah area hoard no. 1, IMJ 2006.53.26139 (RH2), reverse; (**h**) O1/R4: Ramallah area hoard no. 5, IMJ 2006.53.26142 (RH5), reverse; and (**i**) O1/R4: IMJ 34556, reverse.

**Figure 4.** Yehud coins: (**a**) Type 16 O2/R2, (**b**) Type 24 O1/R2, and (**c**) Type 31 O1/R1 of the Yehud series.

A group of 50 specimens was chosen for this study: 32 coins of Type 5 (Figure 3), 9 coins of Type 16 O2/R2 (Figure 4a), 3 coins of Type 24 O1/R2 (Figure 4b), and 6 coins of Type 31 O1/R1 (Figure 4c). The assemblage includes coins found at controlled archaeological excavations and recorded by the Israel Antiquities Authorities (IAA); coins belonging to the Ramallah area hoard, 2006, which belong to the Israel Museum's collection [4]; and coins from the Israel Museum's collection (IMJ).

Because these coins derive from several different sources, we were able to determine whether coins struck from the same pair of dies and found together in the alleged Ramallah area hoard 2006 were produced from the same metal batch or from a different one than that of the coins struck from the same pair of dies and which were either found in controlled archaeological excavations or came from the antiquities market. We assume die-linked coins that appear together in a hoard were probably minted contemporaneously in the striking chain. Hence, our assumption is that their flans were probably prepared from the same metal batch. We also sought to determine the logical striking order of the analyzed Type 5 coins either recovered during controlled archaeological excavations or from the antiquities market based on the deterioration of the obverse and reverse motifs, although such determination is not always precise. We also cannot know how many other coins might have been struck between any two ordered coins in our assemblage during the minting chain process. Our analysis, based on the metallurgical results, may nonetheless help to determine the minting order of a series.
