★ A New Coin of Ura ★

Cilicia, Ura AR Stater. Early 5th century BC. Winged bull walking right; ankh-symbol below; ivy stem with five leaves before, uncertain legend(?) above / Pegasos flying right, 'RH in Aramaic to left; all within incuse square. Unpublished in the standard references including Casabonne 2000. 10.74g, 21mm, 5h.

Good Very Fine. Apparently unique and unpublished.

From the collection of an antiquarian, Bavaria c. 1960s-1990s.

This remarkable coin adds new types to the corpus for the Cilician city of Ura, a city whose coinage until very recently was of the greatest rarity, and may still be considered extremely rare, with only three varieties appearing at auction in the past 20 years.
Ura is a little known historical city, being discussed by few scholars who have conflicting opinions on both its location and its history. Trevor Bryce, (The Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia, Routledge, Oxon, 2011, p.662,) believes Ura to have been the predecessor of the more well known city of Soloi, due to archaeological evidence which could match both the dating and description on Ura in ancient Hittite texts. Other scholars however believe Ura to be the original name for Kelenderis, due to the location of the city on the sea as Ura was known to be a large port town. What can be said with more authority, taken from the ancient text of 'Nariglissar Chronicle', is that the city was the 'Royal City' of Appausu, King of Pirindu, who was one of the Neo-Hittite kings, but was later taken by Nagriglissar, a babylonian king in approximately 557 BC. Due to the conflicting scholarly reports on this city, coin attribution to a mint in this location is often uncertain as stated by Casabonne in her refusal to attribute definitively to this city: 'Nous ne tiendrons pas compe du monnayage au nom d’Ura don’t l’attribution à une cité reste hypothétique' - 'We will not take into account the coinage in the name of Ura so the attribution to a city remains hypothetical'. However, this coin here clearly displays the legend 'RH setting it within the small group of rare coins identified from this city.