Ancient Greek - Kingdom of Mauretania

KINGS of MAURETANIA. Juba II, with Kleopatra Selene. 25 BC-AD 24. Silver denarius (3,26 g. 18 mm.). Caesarea mint, 17-18 A.D.

REX IVBA, diademed head of Juba II righ

BACIΛICCA•KΛЄOΠATPA, six-pointed star within crescent.

SNG Copenhagen 8, 567

This coin is a testament to the many languages spoken in the Kingdom of Mauretania during the period of Juba's rule. The obverse legend is in Latin, a nod to the kingdom's status as a vassal of Rome. Juba, who had grown up in Rome and fought on Augustus' side at Actium, was a personal friend of the first emperor and named the new Mauretanian capital Caesarea in his honor. The reverse legend honors Juba's wife Cleopatra, daughter of Mark Antony and Cleopatra of Egypt, and is written in Greek in an allusion to her mother's Ptolemaic Greek heritage. Though Latin and Greek were the languages that appeared on Juba's coinage, neither were the colloquial tongues of everyday life in his kingdom. The main language of the common population was Berber, which, despite nearly twenty centuries of rule by Latin and Arabic speakers, has survived to the present day. The second language of the kingdom was Punic, a Semitic tongue that was a remnant of six-hundred years of Carthaginian rule and still enjoyed a large number of speakers in the first century AD.

Near extremely fine. Iridescent old cabinet patina.