Athena holding a helmet and a spear, with an owl. Attributed to the Brygos Painter (circa 490–480 BC). The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Owl Coin of Athens

First struck sometime between 525 and 510 B.C. with silver from the nearby mines of Laurium, the Silver Tetradrachms of Athens bore extraordinary significance across the history of Ancient Greece. They were heavily circulated all across Greece, and examples have been discovered as far away as the deserts of Arabia and even the jungles of India.

According to the Ancient Greek historian, Philochorus, this Athenian Tetradrachm was known to the Greeks as a glaux, or “little owl.” This was because the reverse design depicted a species of owl common to the region, the “little owl” or Athene noctua. This owl was a symbol of the city’s patron goddess, Athena, who is depicted on the obverse.

Because these coins were so visually distinct with standard weights and high silver content, they soon began circulating across much of the known world. When the very first coins were offered as INFO, however, they garnered mistrust. Deep test cuts or banker’s marks were a widely practiced method for testing coins. The cut would displace the metal and allow the solid silver core of the coin to be seen, but the cut did not actually remove any of the silver content. It can sometimes be difficult to find examples of the coins from this time without test cuts.

PHILISTIA

In the mid-third millennium BC, city states began to appear in Middle East as the people there benefited from interaction with Sumer and from improvements in irrigation. Within five hundred years, around the 2000 BC mark, the same process was happening further south and west in the Levant, along the Mediterranean coast. Canaanite tribes occupied much of the area, creating a patchwork of city states of their own, each with their own petty king. Dated approximately to 1750 BC, the Old Testament claims that areas of Canaan were being settled by the early Israelites, although this was largely written down over a thousand years after the event so details have been distorted or lost. The Phoenicians (more Canaanites) also occupied parts of this region, eventually founding their own mighty seaborne trading empire.

A section of this region formed the later Palestine, although until the twelfth century BC there were no actual Palestinians as such. Instead the region witnessed the flourishing of various city states that were based around already ancient cities. Some of these had been founded as settlements by the early farming communities as long ago as 9000 BC or so, although they only began to resemble anything like the small cities they later became during the third and second millennia BC. The gene pool here was typically Levantine, so these people were regional natives. The Palestinians whose name was applied to the region by later generations arrived around 1200 BC in the form of the Philistines.

The city of Gerar enters the written historical record via the Old Testament. It is ruled by one Abimelech, possibly a title rather than a name as it is also used by his immediate (and only known) successor. The city was an important royal site during the time of Abraham and the early Israelite settlers, and they were welcomed in an event that can be dated roughly to around 1740 BC. The city was located on the southern border of the inhabited region of Canaan, near one of the big wadis of the Negev known as the Valley of Gerar. It ruled over large parts of the Negev and a number of smaller daughter cities (which were 'smote' by Asa of Judah in the late tenth century BC). In the land of Gerar the Israelite patriarchs found pasture for their flocks during years of drought, but their use of the wells in the area became contentious when native shepherds objected to the extra consumption during a period of hardship.

Gezer (not to be confused with the modern city of Gaza despite some modern claims to the contrary) is now an archaeological site by the name of Tel Gezer. Located in central Israel, it sits where the central mountains meet the northern Shephelah, around ten kilometres to the south-east of the city of Ramleh. The site was inhabited from around 3500 BC until the Roman period, by which time it had fallen out of use. The city of Gath, arguably located at modern Tell es-Safi in the central-western Gaza Strip, was one of the five royal cities of the later Philistines. It was the home of the famous Philistine champion, Goliath, but it seemingly fell out of use within the next six hundred years or so, by the 600s BC.