5. Roman Entry into Palestine | Digitaler Ausstellungskatalog

Showcase 5: Palestine under Pompey (63 BCE)

After the death of Alexander Jannaeus, his widow Salome Alexandra (76 – 67 BCE) assumed sovereignty of the Hasmonean dynasty. Her son John Hyrcanus II became high priest – an office that she as a woman was prevented from holding – while her youngest son Aristobulus II was initially prohibited from assuming a political role. Under his leadership, the so-called desert fortifications were expanded, which would subsequently assume considerable military significance.

When Salome Alexandra also died, in 67 BCE, power struggles soon erupted between John Hyrcanus II (63 – 40 BCE) and his brother Aristobulus II (67 – 63 BCE). Aristobulus was discontent that Hyrcanus also wielded political authority. He thus waged battle against his brother, defeating him near Jericho. At the same time, Judea found itself between the fronts of the two major powers of that time, the expanding Roman Empire in the west and that of the Parthians in the east. The two empires’ struggle for expansion ultimately also effected the Hasmonean kingdom.

Antipater († 43 BCE), the father of the later king Herod, had brought the south of the empire under his control as Hyrcanus’ governor of Edom. He advised Hyrcanus II to approach the king of the Nabataeans, and with his help to win back sovereignty. At the same time, however, Rome began to subdue the Levant, and in 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey (Fig. B.) carried out a reordering of Palestine; he organized the administrative unit of the Decapolis (a league of 10 cities). Both brothers, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, now brought their case before the Roman general. Pompey ruled in favour of Hyrcanus II and reinstalled him as high priest. Aristobulus II refused to accept this decision, but within a short time was placed in Roman prison with his sons Aristobulus and Antigonus Mattathias. There, in 49 BCE, he was killed during the power struggle between Pompey and Caesar, who had planned to install him again as ruler.

Mattathias Antigonus (40 – 37 BCE), the son of Aristobulus II, escaped from Roman imprisonment in 57 BCE. On his return to Judea, he sought with all means to remove his uncle Hyrcanus II from the throne. Only in 40 BCE, with the aid of the Parthian king Orodes II (57 ‒ 37 BCE) (No.5A), did he succeed in vanquishing Hyrcanus II and routing Herod, who in 47 BCE had been installed by his father Antipater as governor of Galilee. In order to render Hyrcanus II unfit for the office of high priest, both of his ears were cut off in prison, as physical intactness was required for the office of high priest. Hyrcanus II spent the following years in a Jewish community in Babylon, until in 36 BCE he was invited to return to Judea by Herod, who ultimately executed him in 30 BCE on charges of conspiracy.

The alliance with the Parthians, however, made Mattathias Antigonus an enemy of Rome. The Romans hence installed Herod as king of Judea. With this powerful ally, the fate of Mattathias Antigonus was sealed, and the rise of the Herodian dynasty began (Fig. C.).

The Last Hasmonean Coins

The conflicts of this period are also mirrored in the iconography of the coins from Mattathias Antigonus. While his first issues with double cornucopias and legends surrounded by wreaths still follow the earlier traditions of Hasmonean coinage (No.1B, No.2B and No.3A), coin No.4A clearly differs: it shows the menorah and the showbread table, two objects from the Temple in Jerusalem. Mattathias was the first and only Jewish ruler to mint coins at all; on them he placed these motifs, which at the time were not yet common sacral images in Jewish art. The earliest representations of both motifs that correspond to their appearance on the Mattathias coins are a likely Jewish depiction of a menorah which is scratched on a wall palster beside the showbread table in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem (Fig. A.) and the famous rendering on the arch of Titus in Rome (Fig. A. Showcase 14). The selection of these devices for coinage, which seek to present him as rightful high priest in connection with his hereditary right as successor of the Hasmonean priest-kings, was a conscious act by Mattathias. It also reflects a clear dissociation from his political opponent, the half-Jewish Herod, son of a Nabataean mother aand Idumean father, who due to his ancestry would never be suitable to occupy the office of high priest. This was a last, vain attempt by Mattathias to win popular support.

Although the production location of the Hasmonean coins remains unknown, the coins themselves reveal something of their methods of manufacture (No.6A): the coin blanks were cast in stone moulds and separated from each other after pouring, with the sprues usually clearly evident on the planchets (for instance No.6B and No.4A). In minting the coins, the so-called al marco method was used, wherein a particular number of coins must be struck from a certain weight of metal. Coins of the same type thus often display great variations in weight, which makes a description of the denominations difficult for us today.

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