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A Nabataean Quarter Sela' of 9 BC

Writer: Sulla80
Sulla80
12 hours ago
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The king on this coin was probably dead when it was struck. The two letters on the reverse stand for the two men who claimed his throne. One of them became the longest reigning Nabataean king on record. The other was beheaded at Rome on the orders of Augustus.

Nabataea, Syllaios and Aretas IV. Silver quarter sela', Petra, about 9/8 BC. 10.3 mm, 1.22 g, 12h.

Obv: Diademed head of Obodas II right; a mark behind, probably the letter shin.

Rev: The Nabataean letters shin and ḥet within a wreath.

Ref: Barkay 71; Meshorer, Nabataea Sup. 4.


The Kingdom at Petra

The Nabataeans were an Arab people who controlled the caravan routes that carried incense and spices from southern Arabia to the Mediterranean ports. Their capital was Petra, in what is now southern Jordan. From about 30 to 9 BC they were ruled by a king named Obodas (Nabataean ʿObodat).


Older catalogues call this king Obodas III. Martin Huth has argued that the short earlier reign once assigned to an "Obodas II" did not exist, and Rachel Barkay's corpus of Nabataean coinage numbers him Obodas II, as this article does.

The Nabataean kingdom at its greatest extent, about 85 BC, with Petra in the south and Damascus in the north. map created for this article.
The Nabataean kingdom at its greatest extent, about 85 BC, with Petra in the south and Damascus in the north. map created for this article.

The Administrator

Josephus, the Jewish historian writing at Rome in the 90s AD, describes the court of Obodas through the eyes of Herod the Great, king of Judaea and Obodas's neighbor to the north.

"There was one Obodas, king of Arabia, an inactive and slothful man in his nature; but Sylleus managed most of his affairs for him. He was a shrewd man, although he was but young, and was handsome withal" 
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 16.220

Josephus describes Obodas as "inactive and slothful," while Strabo portrays him as indifferent to public and military affairs, leaving considerable authority to Syllaios. Robert Wenning argues that such judgments may reflect a misunderstanding of Nabataean kingship, in which the king delegated public business to a chief minister. The substantial building activity at Petra and elsewhere during Obodas's reign further complicates the picture of an ineffective monarch. Strabo drew partly on the philosopher Athenodoros of Tarsus for his account of Nabataean society, although David Graf dates Athenodoros's visit to Petra to approximately 63 to 50 BC, well before Obodas's reign.


Syllaios is the Greek form of the minister's name; in Nabataean it was Shullay. Strabo calls him the epitropos of the Nabataeans, which Horace Leonard Jones translates "administrator" (Geography 16.4.23), and notes that the Nabataean king has, in Jones's translation, "as Administrator one of his companions, who is called 'brother'" (Geography 16.4.21).


The Expedition to Arabia Felix, 25 BC

Syllaios first appears in the Roman record as a guide. In 26 or 25 BC, by the usual dating, Augustus ordered Aelius Gallus, prefect of Egypt, to march on Arabia Felix, the incense country of modern Yemen. Strabo reports that Gallus took about 10,000 infantry, with 500 Jewish troops sent by Herod and 1,000 Nabataeans under Syllaios (Geography 16.4.23).


The army took six months to reach the frontier of the incense country and only sixty days to return (Geography 16.4.24). Strabo, a friend of Gallus, blamed the guide: Gallus found the Arabs unwarlike, and "if Syllaeus had not betrayed him, he would even have subdued the whole of Arabia Felix" (Geography 17.1.53). His is the only account that blames Syllaios. Cassius Dio attributes the losses to heat, disease, and bad water (Roman History 53.29); Josephus, who attacks Syllaios at every other turn, mentions the expedition without naming him (Antiquities 15.317). Rome took no action against Syllaios, and within a decade he was a familiar figure at the court of Augustus.


Herod, Salome, and the Trachonitis

More than a decade later, Syllaios appears at Herod's court in Judaea, conducting the business of Obodas. Josephus reports that he asked to marry Herod's sister Salome and was refused when he would not adopt Jewish customs (Antiquities 16.220 to 225). He later gave refuge to about forty raiders from the Trachonitis, the volcanic district south of Damascus that Augustus had added to Herod's kingdom (Antiquities 16.275). He also delayed repaying a loan that Herod had made to Obodas through him: sixty talents in Josephus's narrative (Antiquities 16.279), five hundred in the speech Josephus gives to Herod's envoy Nikolaos of Damascus (Antiquities 16.343).


Herod demanded the raiders and the money. Syllaios denied that the raiders were in Arabia and put off the payment, and the two sides argued their case before Saturninus, the Roman governor of Syria, and Volumnius, a Roman official serving with him (Antiquities 16.280 to 281). They ruled that the debt be paid and the fugitives returned within thirty days. When the term passed, Syllaios had done neither and had left for Rome, and Herod, with the officials' permission, led troops against the raiders' stronghold (Antiquities 16.282 to 283).


Syllaios was already at the palace. Josephus says he dressed in black, went in to Augustus, and reported that Herod had laid Arabia waste and that 2,500 of its leading men were dead (Antiquities 16.287 to 288). Augustus believed him and wrote to Herod that he had treated him as a friend and would now treat him as a subject (Antiquities 16.290).


Far to the north, in the basalt desert of what is now northeastern Jordan, a nomad named Taim carved a rock inscription in Safaitic, the script of the herding tribes of the Syrian desert, mourning three kinsmen "in the year that Syllaios came from Rome". Abbadi dates it between 12 and 9 BC and suggests the tribes looked to Syllaios for protection against Herod. Michael Macdonald's survey of the Safaitic texts gives reasons for caution on both points. The letters rm most likely mean Rome or the Romans, though the identification rests on probability, since the same consonants could name another people. And an event used to date an inscription is, in his words, evidence "for the spread of news or rumour but not necessarily for contact or involvement." The inscription shows that word of Syllaios's journey reached the desert tribes.

This inscription was carved by Taim, son of Masik, who traced his ancestry through Qatl, Bard, Hamat, Ghalmat, Mar, Aftay, and Gaml. He mourned Ghayr, Matal, and Qatl in the year that Syllaios fled from Rome. He spent that year keeping watch and called upon Baalshamin, the god of heaven, to grant help, protection, and kindness to those mentioned in the final words.
This inscription was carved by Taim, son of Masik, who traced his ancestry through Qatl, Bard, Hamat, Ghalmat, Mar, Aftay, and Gaml. He mourned Ghayr, Matal, and Qatl in the year that Syllaios fled from Rome. He spent that year keeping watch and called upon Baalshamin, the god of heaven, to grant help, protection, and kindness to those mentioned in the final words.

A second Safaitic inscription, discovered nearby and published by Al-Rawabdeh and Abbadi (2017), refers to the year Syllaios "fled from Rome," rather than merely returning from it. Although the identification and interpretation are partly reconstructed, the differing descriptions offer a rare glimpse of how Syllaios's movements were remembered beyond the Roman and Herodian courts.


The Death of Obodas

“Syllaios left his own record in the Aegean. At the sanctuary of Apollo at Miletus he set up a tablet in Nabataean and Greek to Zeus-Dushara ‘for the life of Obodas the king,’ calling himself ‘Shullay, brother of the king, son of Taimu’; the month, Tevet, survives, but not the year. A more damaged tablet on Delos, largely restored by J. T. Milik, carries the same prayer for the king and a date in Shevat of Obodas’s twentieth or twenty-first year, that is, about 11 or 10 BC. Whether these dedications and his journey to Rome belonged to one trip or several is uncertain.”


Obodas died soon afterward, probably in 9 BC, while Syllaios was at Rome (Antiquities 16.294). The sources give no cause. Syllaios' presence at Rome when Obodas died placed him in a position to influence the succession. Whether this was deliberate political preparation or an unexpected opportunity cannot be established.


A noble named Aeneas took power at Petra under the throne name Aretas (Nabataean Ḥaretat), without waiting for Augustus to approve (Antiquities 16.294 to 295).


Aretas sent Augustus a gold crown and a letter accusing Syllaios of having poisoned Obodas (Antiquities 16.296). Augustus, angry that Aretas had taken the throne without his consent, turned the embassy away. Josephus does not call Aretas a son of Obodas, though Meshorer did; Barkay concludes that Obodas apparently left no son to succeed him. A damaged building inscription from Petra honors Aretas and a queen Hagaru. As usually restored, it calls her a daughter of King Malichus and Aretas’s own mother, which would make Aretas a grandson of Malichus I and a nephew of Obodas on his mother’s side.


The Coins of Syllaios

This coin is conventionally associated with the succession crisis c. 9–6 BC. Behind the head of Obodas is a mark, and on the reverse the letters shin and ḥet stand within a wreath. Scholars have read these marks in turn. Ya'akov Meshorer, in 1975, read the mark behind the head as a monogram of Obodas's name and the shin on the reverse as the initial of Shullay. He took the coins as Syllaios's own, struck in the confusion of 9 BC, and called them enigmatic. The ḥet, he noted, also appears on earlier coins of Malichus I and Obodas, so it need not stand for Aretas. Karl Schmitt-Korte and Martin Price, in 1994, read both marks as shin and the ḥet as the initial of Ḥaretat, Aretas, and saw in the coins a public partnership, a joint rule that lasted in their reconstruction from 9 to 6 BC. Huth argued the joint issue in detail in 2010: the coins name both claimants under the portrait of the dead king, from whom both drew their legitimacy, at a time when Augustus had confirmed neither. Nada Al-Rawabdeh followed this reading in 2015. Barkay, in 2019, reads the coins as Syllaios's own issue, struck by a rival who claimed authority without claiming the crown.


All of Syllaios's coins are small denominations, and none carries a royal title; his name appears at most as a monogram of its three letters. Aretas issued large coins with his name and titles from his first year.


The coin is a quarter sela' in Barkay's terms, a quarter of the Nabataean silver unit of about 4.4g (Schmitt-Korte and Price call it a quarter drachm), struck in silver of about 90 percent purity. A half sela' of about 2.2g, with an eagle on the reverse, was struck alongside it. Barkay records weights for this type from 0.99 to 1.24g; at 1.22g this example is among the heaviest. The portrait follows Obodas's own coinage: hair combed down the side of the head and ending in vertical curls over the ear, with a short fringe on the forehead. A V-shaped ornament closes the top of the wreath.


Syllaios went on striking coins after Rome had chosen Aretas. A second group of his coins carries Aretas's laureate head on the obverse, with Syllaios's shin, and later a monogram of the letters of Shullay, beside Aretas's own initials. On the smallest bronzes, which show a queen's head on the reverse, Syllaios's letter appears alone.


Trial and Execution

Herod sent Nikolaos of Damascus, the Greek historian who served him as adviser and envoy, to answer Syllaios's charge that he had made war on Arabia. Nabataeans who had abandoned Syllaios joined Nikolaos and brought letters proving that Syllaios had killed many of Obodas's friends (Antiquities 16.337). Before Augustus, with Aretas's ambassadors present, Nikolaos charged Syllaios with the death of the king (Antiquities 16.339). Josephus, whose account of these years draws largely on Nikolaos's own history, gives the outcome: "Sylleus was condemned to die" (Antiquities 16.352).


Augustus first sent Syllaios back to settle Herod's claim and repay the debt. Josephus adds that Augustus had considered giving Arabia to Herod, and changed his mind on reading Herod's letters about his quarrelling sons (Antiquities 16.353). He reproved Aretas for taking the throne without permission, accepted his gifts, and confirmed him as king (Antiquities 16.355).


Syllaios was at Rome again around 6 or 5 BC. Aretas now accused him of killing leading men at Petra, among them Soemus, and of killing Fabatus, an agent of Augustus (Antiquities 17.54). Herod added that Syllaios had bribed Corinthus, one of Herod's bodyguards, to murder him (Antiquities 17.55 to 57; Jewish War 1.574 to 577).


Strabo, writing within a generation of these events, gives the end in Jones's translation: 

Syllaios "paid the penalty at Rome, since, although he pretended friendship, he was convicted, in addition to his rascality in this matter, of other offences too, and was beheaded" (Geography 16.4.24).

Strabo ties the execution to the expedition of twenty years before; Josephus ties it to the quarrels with Herod and Aretas. Björn Anderson suggests that Strabo carried the later crimes back to the campaign, and shaped Syllaios into a figure for Arabia itself, prosperous on the surface and treacherous beneath.


Almost everything written about Syllaios comes from his rivals or their friends. Strabo wrote for the patron whose army Syllaios had guided; Josephus drew on Nikolaos, who prosecuted him. The poisoning charge was never proved, and he was at Rome when the king died. The record he left himself consists of tablets for the life of his king, a desert nomad's date, and coins that set his initial beside a king's portrait.


The End of the Series

Aretas IV continued to use the portrait of Obodas on some of his early coins. The last of these issues date to his fourth regnal year, 6/5 BC, when his own laureate portrait replaced that of his predecessor. Meshorer, Schmitt-Korte and Price, and Barkay associate this transition with the end of Syllaios's challenge to Aretas's authority. Aretas would rule until AD 40, the longest reign securely documented in Nabataean history.


Syllaios left a very different legacy. To Strabo, he was the treacherous guide responsible for a Roman military disaster; to Josephus, drawing heavily on the account of Herod's adviser Nikolaos of Damascus, he was an ambitious minister implicated in murder and political intrigue. Yet the inscriptions at Miletus and Delos, the references to his movements among the desert tribes, and the coins bearing his initial preserve another picture: that of a man who exercised considerable authority within the Nabataean kingdom.


Whether Syllaios intended to seize the throne, share power with Aretas, or preserve an established position that the new king threatened remains uncertain. The literary sources leave us with accusations; the coins offer evidence of a political struggle whose precise nature is still debated.


That is what makes this small silver coin remarkable. Its portrait belongs to a dead king, its letters have been interpreted as identifying two rivals, and its modest denomination belies the significance of the events surrounding its issue. Nearly two thousand years after Augustus ordered Syllaios's execution, the coin still preserves a question the surviving historians cannot conclusively answer: what authority did Syllaios actually hold?

Nabataea, Aretas IV with Shaqilat. Bronze, Petra, after AD 18. Obv: jugate busts of Aretas and Shaqilat right. Rev: crossed cornucopias. Ref: Meshorer 112 to 114.
Nabataea, Aretas IV with Shaqilat. Bronze, Petra, after AD 18. Obv: jugate busts of Aretas and Shaqilat right. Rev: crossed cornucopias. Ref: Meshorer 112 to 114.

References

  • Whiston, William, trans. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, books 15 to 17, and The Jewish War, book 1. 1737.

  • Jones, Horace Leonard, trans. Strabo, Geography, books 16 and 17. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA, 1930 and 1932.

  • Cary, Earnest, trans. Cassius Dio, Roman History, book 53. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA, 1917.

  • Abbadi, Sabri. "A New Safaitic Inscription Dated to 12-9 BC." Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 7 (2001): 481-484.

  • Kawerau, Georg, and Albert Rehm. Das Delphinion in Milet. Berlin, 1914. (The Miletus dedication of Syllaios.)

  • Roussel, Pierre, and Marcel Launey. Inscriptions de Délos. Paris, 1937. No. 2315. (The Delos dedication of Syllaios.)


Miletus, inscription 49: Preserves Syllaios's name in Greek (partly restored), his designation as the king's brother, his father's name in incomplete form, and a dedication to Zeus-Dushara.


Delos, inscription 50 (ID 2315): Much more damaged. It preserves fragments referring to the life of Obodas, but Syllaios's name, the full dedication, and the precise date rely on reconstruction.

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