Prutah - Herod the Great

Herod received his kingship from the Roman Senate in 40 BC — the very year this prutah was struck — but he did not actually control Judea until 37 BC, after a military campaign backed by Rome drove out the Parthian-installed Hasmonean ruler Antigonus II. The coin was issued in anticipation of a reign, not from within one.

Hendin 1172 is among the more reliably attributed of Herod's issues, a series complicated by the absence of royal portraiture — a deliberate concession to Jewish religious sensibility that Herod maintained despite his otherwise aggressive Romanization of the court.