Ancient NEWSmismatics: The Zeugitana Silver Shekel at Face Value: Is is Hannibal or Herakles(-Melquart)? by L.A.

Hambly

ZEUGITANIA. Carthage. Time of Hannibal Barca (ca. 221-201 BC). AR shekel (23mm, 6.64 gm, 12h). Second Punic War issue. Carthage or uncertain mint in Sicily, ca. 213-210 BC. Male head left, with long sideburn (Hannibal as Heracles-Melqart?) / Elephant advancing right; in exergue, Punic letter aleph. Burnett 114-5. Vison 55. Robinson series 8a, pl. III (Gades). SNG Copenhagen 382. Extremely rare - only two specimens in the Enna hoard, and one of only a small handful in existence. Small die-break on cheek and minor lamination flaws. Extremely Fine.

The portrait on the obverse is widely believed to be that of the Carthaginian General Hannibal Barca delineated as the Tyrian city-god Herakles-Melquart while the reverse depicts an image of the Elephas maximus asurus or "Syrian Elephant" (the species described by Marcus Porcius Cato and related by Pliny the Elder as the personal elephant of Hannibal.) The difficulty in absolute identification is that there are no portraits that positively depict the living Hannibal; however Pliny (the Elder) mentions that there may be seen in Rome three statues of Hannibal We can really only compare the extant marble bust of Hannibal from Capua with the coins identified as either Hannibal, [father] Hamilcar, [brother] Hasdrubal or Herakles-Melquart. The face on the coin is, in my opinion, too realistic to be a stylized strike of a deity-the nasolabial fold(s); furrowed brow ridge(s), leonine curls; what emerges from the compilation of these non-artistic components is a portrait of a very Mediterranean Caucasoid visage-safely assuming that [aristocratic] Hannibal is a better than average representation of the Libyo-Phoenician Carthaginian aristocratic class. With the absence of very definitive physical traits or defects-i.e. the ophthalmic injury affecting his right eye-represented in the face itself, it is very difficult to completely ascertain if we are looking at a man or a myth. This being said, I think it prudent to examine secondary, if not tertiary characteristics of the coin in deciding if it depicts Hannibal or Herakles-(Melquart). Very few of the elephants, whether they were the smaller African subspecies from the Atlas Mountains or the Syrian subspecies of the Asian elephant survived the trek through the Western Alps; however, a contemporary account tells us that Hannibals personal elephant Suros, The Syran, survived. The Ptolemies seized as part of their war booty from their Syrian campaigns, some Indian elephants and it is in this perspective that it is

Is it a man or a myth?

Ancient NEWSmismatics: The Zeugitana Silver Shekel at Face Value: Is is Hannibal or Herakles(-Melquart)? by L.A. Hambly
likely that some descendants of those elephants eventually ended up in Carthage as Egypt and Carthage enjoyed both political and commercial stability at that time. The elephant on the reverse might be viewed as a Barccid family crest of some description, therefore adding a more human element to the image on the obverse.