1/4 Shekel

Tyre's quarter-shekel fractional coinage of this period derives its authority from the city's position as the dominant commercial hub of the eastern Mediterranean, where Phoenician merchants required small silver for port transactions that the full shekel made impractical. The Tyrian shekel standard itself was later adopted — with modifications — as the basis for the temple tax coinage used in Jerusalem, a direct commercial inheritance from Phoenician trade infrastructure.