Æ15 - Aretas III

Aretas III seized Damascus around 85 BC after the Seleucid collapse left the city effectively ungoverned, giving the Nabataean kingdom its northernmost reach and prompting him to adopt the Hellenistic title "Philhellenos." This bronze issue belongs to that expansionist phase, when Nabataean coinage was just beginning to develop a consistent civic identity — earlier kings had struck almost nothing in bronze at all.

Meshorer's corpus remains the foundational reference for Nabataean numismatics, though attribution within the series is complicated by inconsistent die-cutting and the kingdom's heavy reliance on itinerant engravers trained in the broader Hellenistic tradition.