The coins of this class are more numerous than any of the others. From No. 3 (engraved on Pl. III. Fig. 1), an unusually fine specimen, it appears that the sceptre carried by the attendant is surmounted by an animal's head with long ears of Egyptian style. On No. 1 of Class 2, with O, it resembles the head of a goat, the beard being clearly visible, with this may be compared the heads of this animal, incuse, on the coins of Series I.

The coins of this class are in many respects different from all which precede, although the types are the same. In the first place, the style of art has become almost barbarous : witness the elongated figure of the king on one of the coins of year 21, where he is enormously out of proportion to the size of the chariot.

In the next place, the fabric is peculiar, the edges of the coins being often hammered flat as on the double darics. The forms of the letters are also different, the Aramaic form y taking the place of 9. The inscription on the reverse Z12 has been read or . This word occurs frequently on the autonomous coins of Tarsus in the fourth century B.C., and under the Seleucide rule, see Brandis, pp. 500, 501; also on the Satrapal coins of the same city (Brandis, p. 430). But at Tarsus the forms of the characters are somewhat different:

instead of Z12. Nevertheless, that these are two forms of one and the same word has been recognized by all (see Waddington, Mélanges, 1861, p. 70; Levy, Phon. Stud. 1857, p. 40), although all are not agreed as to the meaning of the word. Levy reads it Mazdi (for Ahuramazda). Blau, on the other hand, compares it with the Zend mizda, 'pay.' On the obol the word is abbreviated >. Brandis looks upon it as equivalent to the Greek ȧpyúpiov or kóμμa on the silver staters of Seuthes, and this is perhaps, on the whole, the most probable interpretation.

As to the attribution of the coins with this inscription, I am inclined, chiefly on account of their fabric, to doubt whether they are Phoenician, like the coins of the other classes. The types of the widely-circulating Perso-Phoenician coins may well have been adopted by some inland district or city of Syria, possibly Thapsacus, which would fully account for the difference of fabric and for the varying forms of the letters. Thapsacus may also have been in close commercial relations with Tarsus, with which it was connected by the route which passed through Beroa (Aleppo) and the Syrian gates. This would account for the use of the word on the coinage of the two cities.

Before passing to the next series, we must not omit to mention certain small copper coins, which, by their types, attach themselves to the Perso-Phoenician silver coins of the second series described above. These may be divided into three classes as follows.

As these copper coins can hardly have been issued before the middle of the fourth. century B.C., they afford an indication of the date of the later silver coins, with which they correspond.

It will be well also to notice in this place several other coins, which may be compared with those of Series II. Of these the most remarkable is one of the two didrachms which bear the name of Abd-Hadad. (Brandis, p. 431.)

M. Waddington (Mélanges, 1861, p. 90) gives good reasons for attributing this coin to a dynast or satrap of the name of Abd-Hadad, who ruled at Bambyce (Hierapolis) in Syria. The date, year 30, M. Waddington thinks, can only refer to the reign of Artaxerxes Mnemon.

The coin would therefore have been struck in B.c. 375, another indication of the date of the Perso-Phoenician coins of Series II., from which its reverse type is imitated.

There are also two coins in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow, one of which is of Tarsus, and the other of some Phoenician town, which reproduce the type of the king contending with the lion.

The inscription on this coin remains unexplained, but the forms of the letters point to Phoenicia rather than Cilicia.

The following coin of Tarsus may be also here mentioned, as it bears on its reverse the type of the royal Persian money.

TARSUS.
Stater.

168

Horseman 1. holding flower, in exergue
17/7?

Incuse square. The king as archer kneeling r.; behind, crux ansata.

[Mus. Hunter. Plate III. 13.]