Yehud coinage

[3] In 2023, numismatic scholars Gitler, Lorber, and Fontanille have published an updated classification and chronology of the Yehud coinage.

The series began with a small number of drachms with Aramaic legends, classified as Types 1–3, which were produced at a mint at some location in Philistia.

[5] This opening of a mint in Judah seems to have been marked by the beginning of the production of much smaller coins, that are rather unusual in the general regional context of the Eastern Mediterranean.

[13] The obverse of this coin also features the portrait of a man in a military helmet that many interpreted as Bagoas, a general of Artaxerxes III.

[14] According to a detailed study by Shenkar (2008), an attribution of this coin to a Samarian mint is plausible, based on its "weight, chemical composition and iconography".

Only one such coin is known, and it may have been designed to combine "the most powerful and widely known images of deities – Zeus and Ahuramazda to produce something eclectic and new.

Nevertheless, the larger denomination coins from more centralized mints elsewhere in the region were also circulating in large numbers, especially in the context of foreign trade.

[22] Unlike later Jewish coinage, Yehud coins depict living creatures, flowers and even human beings.

Depictions on the coinage include imagery borrowed from other cultures, such as the Athenian Owl, and various mythological creatures.

[25] The coins from the Persian period tend to be inscribed in Aramaic "square script" or Paleo-Hebrew and use the Aramaic spelling of the province as 'y-h-d', while those coins from the Ptolemaic/Hellenistic period (or maybe earlier) are inscribed in the Paleo-Hebrew script and usually spell Judea as 'y-h-d', 'y-h-d-h' or 'y-h-w-d-h'.

[26] A 2009 study by Yehoshua Zlotnik attempts to relate different kinds of coins, and the specifics of their manufacture to the changing political situation in Judea in the 4th century BCE.

He deals with different coin-types, and with such unusual phenomena as minting on only one side of the coin, and seemingly deliberate flaws on certain dies.

According to Zlotnik, these and other features can clarify the political state of affairs in Judah, such as independence, autonomy, or transition period.

Egyptian gold stater was the first coin ever minted in ancient Egypt around 360 BC during the reign of pharaoh Teos of the 30th Dynasty.

[31] The lily symbol with the legend 𐤉‬𐤄𐤃 (YHD) appears on the obverse of the one Israeli new shekel coin (שקל חדש אחד [he]).