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PUBLIC DOMAIN

EARLY JUDEAN COINS regularly featured human and animal figures. By the late second century B.C.E., however, Judean leaders consciously refrained from figural imagery, which they replaced with decorative elements and creative use of the written word. This bronze prutah of the Hasmonean high priest John Hyrcanus I, for example, features a lengthy Hebrew inscription inside a wreath that reads, “Yehohanan the High Priest and the assembly of the Judeans.”