The Mattathias Antigonus Menorah Coin

Bronze prutot struck in the name of Mattathias Antigonus, the last Hasmonean king and high priest (reigned 40–37 BC), have been recovered from numerous excavation contexts across Judea, including Jerusalem itself. Specimens entered institutional collections through both controlled excavation and the antiquities market across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Major holdings are catalogued at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and the British Museum, London, where examples appear in the Department of Coins and Medals. The coins are classified in Ya'akov Meshorer's standard corpus of Jewish coinage. The bronze prutot are small, typically ranging from 14 to 17 mm in diameter. Their obverse displays a seven-branched menorah enclosed within a wreath, accompanied by a Greek legend reading ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΝΤΙΓΟΝΟΥ ("of King Antigonus"). The reverse depicts a showbread table (shulchan ha-lechem ha-panim) alongside a Hebrew inscription rendering the name and title Matityah the High Priest. These images correspond directly to the furnishings prescribed in Exodus 25:23–40, the menorah of pure gold with six lateral branches and the acacia-wood table appointed for the twelve loaves detailed in Leviticus 24:5–9. The pairing of both vessels on a single coin type is without earlier numismatic parallel. The Antigonus bronzes hold considerable significance for biblical and Second Temple studies on multiple grounds. They confirm that the menorah's seven-branched form was an established, recognizable Temple symbol by the late first century BC, predating the Arch of Titus relief (AD 81) by over a century. The explicit invocation of the showbread table alongside the menorah reflects the high-priestly dimension of Hasmonean rule and the political theology of the dynasty's final claimant. For exegetes, the coins materially anchor the Exodus and Leviticus prescriptions within a living cultic tradition rather than merely a textual ideal, and they illuminate the iconographic vocabulary later adopted in synagogue art and rabbinic literature. **Sources:** Ya'akov Meshorer, *A Treasury of Jewish Coins* (Yad Ben-Zvi Press, 2001); David Hendin, *Guide to Biblical Coins*, 5th ed. (Amphora Books, 2010); Leo Mildenberg, *The Coinage of the Bar Kokhba War* (Sauerländer, 1984); Exodus 25:23–40; Leviticus 24:5–9.