The Bilingual Coinage of Mattathias Antigonus
Bronze coins of Mattathias Antigonus, the last Hasmonean king, pair Greek royal legends with Paleo-Hebrew high-priestly claims. Large denominations and the rare menorah-and-table type document the final struggle for Jewish rule before Herod without depicting a biblical event.
- Artifact date
- 40–37 BC
- Findspot
- Examples found in Judea, Samaria, hoards, and collections
- Current location
- Multiple collections, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France and Jewish Museum, New York
What archaeologists can actually examine
The coins directly attest Mattathias Antigonus using both a Greek kingship title and a Hebrew high-priestly title during his final Hasmonean regime. Their unusual large denominations and bilingual legends communicate authority to more than one reading public. The menorah-and-table issue supplies near-contemporary Jewish iconography for Temple furnishings before AD 70, but its schematic art cannot settle every detail of the historical menorah's construction. Distribution in Samaria and Judea helps trace the wartime economy, though findspot patterns do not narrate individual battles. The evidence corroborates titles, imagery, minting, and political self-presentation. It does not demonstrate divine approval, identify a New Testament coin, or provide a photograph of the Temple interior.
Greek king and Hebrew high priest
The coinage presents paired royal and priestly authority in two scripts and languages.
A structured wartime series
Large, medium, and small bronzes served political messaging and exchange during 40–37 BC.
Pre-70 Temple imagery
A rare prutah depicts a seven-branched menorah and a table interpreted as the showbread table.
Symbol, not photograph
The stylized coin gives contemporary iconography but not an exact technical drawing of Temple furnishings.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
The coinage became known through collected and excavated specimens rather than one discovery. Nineteenth-century numismatists already recognized issues of Antigonus, and later die studies, hoards, and controlled excavations clarified their denominations and distribution. The Bibliothèque nationale de France preserves catalogued eight-prutah bronzes photographed in the public-domain Gallica program. The Jewish Museum holds a rare small coin showing the seven-branched menorah, while the Bank of Israel uses that Temple-vessel design to explain the ancestry of modern Israeli coin imagery. Israel Numismatic Society research distinguishes large bilingual pieces, medium denominations, and prutot. Together these objects form a coherent emergency royal series from the three-year contest between Antigonus, Herod, Rome, and Parthian intervention.
What you are looking at
Large bronzes can carry a Paleo-Hebrew legend naming Mattatayah the high priest and the council of the Jews on one face and a Greek legend of King Antigonus on the other. Cornucopias, wreaths, and other familiar Hasmonean elements accompany the texts. The famous rare prutah replaces those motifs with a seven-branched menorah and a table commonly interpreted as the showbread table, offering one of the very few surviving Jewish depictions of Temple vessels made while the Second Temple stood. Different denominations must not be conflated: the selected BnF image is an authentic eight-prutah type, not the menorah prutah. The corpus as a whole, rather than one hybrid reconstruction, reveals the ruler's paired priestly and royal claims.
Where it belongs in history
Antigonus ruled from 40 to 37 BC after Parthian support displaced Hyrcanus II and Herod. Rome backed Herod, who captured Jerusalem and ended Antigonus's reign and the independent Hasmonean monarchy. Coinage functioned as both currency and political speech during that compressed conflict. Hebrew linked the king to priestly and ancestral legitimacy; Greek announced monarchy in the language of eastern Mediterranean power. Temple-vessel imagery could mobilize sacred and national associations at a moment when the regime's survival was uncertain. Lead content and poor preservation complicate some specimens, while denominations show efforts to supply a wartime market. The series belongs immediately before Herod's consolidation and therefore marks a decisive transition in the material culture of Judean rule.
Consensus, questions, and debate
Catalogued objects and the ruler's dates are secure, but specialists debate denomination structure, die sequence, geographic circulation, and the iconographic details of rare types. Israel Numismatic Society discussion argues that the menorah designer could have known the Temple vessel, yet claims of exact visual fidelity go beyond what a tiny schematic die can demonstrate. The Jewish Museum accurately labels its object as a prutah of Antigonus and emphasizes the rarity of pre-destruction menorah depictions. The Bank of Israel summarizes Hasmonean conventions for a public audience. Publication should distinguish those levels of evidence and never use the public-domain BnF eight-prutah photograph while captioning it as the menorah coin.
The biblical record beside the artifact
Exodus 25:23–40 describes the table and seven-branched lampstand for the sanctuary, and Hebrews 9:2 recalls the candlestick and table in its description of the first tabernacle space. The rare Antigonus coin is important because Jewish engravers represented those vessel types while Herod's Temple stood. It does not reproduce the Exodus text or guarantee photorealistic accuracy, and the showbread-table interpretation remains an identification of stylized imagery. The bilingual larger coins also illuminate how high-priestly language from Israel's Scriptures became part of royal political legitimacy. This is contextual evidence for the persistence and public power of Temple symbols, not an excavated implement from the sanctuary or a coin named in the New Testament.
Exodus 25:31–40
31¶ And thou shalt make a candlestick [of] pure gold: [of] beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft, and his branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be of the same.
32And six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side:
33Three bowls made like unto almonds, [with] a knop and a flower in one branch; and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, [with] a knop and a flower: so in the six branches that come out of the candlestick.
34And in the candlestick [shall be] four bowls made like unto almonds, [with] their knops and their flowers.
35And [there shall be] a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, according to the six branches that proceed out of the candlestick.
36Their knops and their branches shall be of the same: all it [shall be] one beaten work [of] pure gold.
37And thou shalt make the seven lamps thereof: and they shall light the lamps thereof, that they may give light over against it.
38And the tongs thereof, and the snuffdishes thereof, [shall be of] pure gold.
39[Of] a talent of pure gold shall he make it, with all these vessels.
40And look that thou make [them] after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount.
A responsible historical conclusion
Antigonus's coins capture a collapsing dynasty speaking in two political registers at once. One side asserts the office of high priest in ancestral script; the other asserts kingship in Greek. That combination makes the coinage a compact primary archive of the final Hasmonean claim to rule. The rare Temple-vessel type adds another layer: sacred objects became public symbols before Roman destruction turned the menorah into an emblem of loss and endurance. For Bible readers, the series supplies authentic pre-70 imagery for sanctuary traditions while disciplining imagination about what a coin can show. For historians, it fixes royal titles and propaganda at the exact hinge between Hasmonean independence and Herodian government.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
Coin Prutah of King Mattathias Antigonus
The Jewish MuseumMuseum catalogue for the authentic menorah prutah, with date, medium, dimensions, and Temple-vessel interpretation.
Mattathias Antigonus Coins: The Last King of the Hasmoneans
Israel Numismatic SocietySpecialist overview of denominations, bilingual legends, metal, distribution, and Temple-vessel imagery.
Currency Exhibition: Hasmonean Dynasty
Bank of IsraelInstitutional overview of Hasmonean coinage and the Antigonus menorah-and-table type.
Eight Prutah of Mattathias II Antigonus
Wikimedia Commons / Bibliothèque nationale de FranceExact public-domain face image of catalogued BnF Fonds général 68.
One face of a catalogued eight-prutah bronze of Mattathias Antigonus in the Bibliothèque nationale de France; this is not the separate rare menorah prutah. · Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Monnaies, médailles et antiques, via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
View the image source and license