Zev Radovan

Equine emblem. This coin bears the image of Tyche, goddess of fortune, standing in front of a horse, the symbol of ancient Hippos. The inscription features the name “Antiochus of Hippos.” The right to mint coins in the Greco-Roman period was restricted to a small number of autonomous cities. By the second century B.C., Hippos was in effect a city-state. Its official boundaries extended more than 12 miles, from the perennial springs to the east that supplied it with water to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee on the west. In the first century B.C., Hippos became a member of the Decapolis, the League of Ten Cities created by the Roman general Pompey in the northern Jordan Valley and in neighboring Transjordan.