Nabatean coin?

I was told by a local coin vendor that this is a Nabataen Kingdom coin, but since Numista only has 1 registered and these coins are ancient I don't have any catalog to which I can appeal to identify it and really see if it is a Nabataen coin or if my vendor is confused or trying to scan me (specially because it would be pretty rare for a coin from those places to turn up all the way over here as it isn't like being in the land where they existed when sometimes prospectors find them in the dirt).




Any input is welcome.

One side of the coin is pretty worn so it might be hard to exactly identify it but it's clearly a coin of Nabataean Kingdom. In second image is the head of Aretas IV the King of Nabataea. There are many fake coins like this one, even on ebay are very many for sale so before spent huge amounts of money for ancient coins be sure they are genuine.

Цитата: Andy289One side of the coin is pretty worn so it might be hard to exactly identify it but it's clearly a coin of Nabataean Kingdom. In second image is the head of Aretas IV the King of Nabataea. There are many fake coins like this one, even on ebay are very many for sale so before spent huge amounts of money for ancient coins be sure they are genuine.

Thanks for the info. I'll see how much does he want for it, and depending on that I would ask for further certification, if he ask little money I might get it just like that, as I don't mind replicas too much, specially for coins that might be worth huge loads of money for the real deal. Also a lot of sellers over here sell good coins for trash-cash, they only sell the silver and gold coins for huge prices.
Also, since this one looks like it was close to a sulfur rock he might sell it cheap as it looks bad for those who only want shinny coins.

compare : http://www.zeno.ru/search.php?searchid=247573

Цитата: PetrusAscanuscompare : http://www.zeno.ru/search.php?searchid=247573

I think this is the one that looks the most similar and it is Aretas IV which also confirms Andy289 comment:

http://www.zeno.ru/showphoto.php?photo=108311

Although the back on the one I picture has the "7" and "H" bonded as an "H" with a line going left from the top of its left line, don't know to which extend that could be a normal variation in the minting of these coins.

Цитата: erdvillaAlthough the back on the one I picture has the "7" and "H" bonded as an "H" with a line going left from the top of its left line, don't know to which extend that could be a normal variation in the minting of these coins.

It's not "7" and "H" they are aramaic letters heth and resh. This combination denotes the king's name because the word Aretas is formed by letters heth-resh-taw-taw. Also because this is a bronze coin without the head of a queen imply that this coin was issued between 4th and 6th years of Aretas's reign, probably minted in Petra, the capital of Nabataean Kingdom.

There is a good study in Nabataean numismatic made by Ya’akov Meshorer.

I would suggest you read the Schmitt-Korte papers which goes over the classifications of a lot of these coins.  They are available on JSTOR and you can get a free account to read the papers.  Andy is somewhat correct.  It is Nabatean, not Aramaic.  It is derived from the same alphabet though.  A technicality and hence doesn't deter from his classification Note that most journals use Hebrew to attribute these coins which isn't 100% correct.  Ideally, you should use the Nabatean alphabet and cross-reference with Hebrew to get the correct legends, unless of course you can read Nabatean.  Nabatean has now been encoded in Unicode 7 and hence you can download the document from here.  The standard reference, of course, is Ya’akov Meshorer, but Schmitt-Korte is free  

Schmitt-Korte, K. and Cowell, M., Nabatean Coinage - Part I. The Silver Content Measured by X-ray Fluorescence Analysis, Numismatic Chronicle, Vol. 149, 1989
Schmitt-Korte, K., Nabatean Coinage - Part II. New Coin Types and Variants, Numismatic Chronicle, Vol. 150, 1990
Schmitt-Korte, K. and Price, M., Nabatean Coinage - Part III. The Nabatean Monetary System, Numismatic Chronicle, Vol. 154, 1994

Regards,

Ram