Persian satrap Abdasan
Paphlagonia, Sinope
circa 360-330 BCE
AR Drachm 20mm, 5.09g. 9h
Head of nymph Sinope left, wearing triple-pendant earring, necklace and sakkos; aphlaston before /
Aramaic legend ‘BDSSN below eagle standing to left on dolphin.
SNG Stancomb 760; Recueil général Pl XXIV, 27; SNG BM Black Sea 1356-8; HGC 7, 433
This coin was minted by the Persian satrap Abdasan. Who was Abdasan? We don’t really know. The following are some theories.
B.V. Head suggested it was an Aramaicized version of Sysinas, the son of Datames.
Babelon believed it was Abrokomas, a Persian commander from the period of 401-380 BCE
J.P. Six suggested the name ‘Abdasan’
Cynthia Harrison keeps it to ‘Abdssn, which on coins with a better legend is what’s written
So, we don’t know. I’ve written Abdasan, since it matches the text and sounds better. But, moving on, who was he?
While my two obols isn’t going to make a dent here, I’ll provide my own theory based on the coinage, which is tricky. In fact, this coin was misattributed as a standard Sinope issue, but although much of the legend is missing, it’s clear that it’s Aramaic and not Greek.
Waddington, Reinach, and Babelon’s Recueil général des monnaies grecques d’Asie Mineure list three groups of coins of this type with Aramaic legends.
Ariarathes I
‘Abdssn
‘Barbaric imitations’
Cynthia Harrison, in Persian Names on Coins of Northern Anatolia, points out that the ‘barbaric imitations’ category is considerably richer, and suggests who three of them possibly were. She does not go into more depth on ‘Abdssn/Abdasan other than a suggestion that his coins were minted before Ariarathes’.
The first challenge in identifying these coins is making sense of the Aramaic, which is a challenge here because much of it is missing.
To understand more, I turned to the ancient literature to understand more of Ariarathes‘ reign, but little more is understood of him. He may or may not have faced off against Alexander at the Battle of the Granicus. After that battle, it’s uncertain whether he fled and took control over Cappadocia, or whether his son of the same name did that – or maybe was left in charge of Cappadocia.
Sinope is also not in Cappadocia. I found no information on how or when Ariarathes took control of it, but the coinage clearly shows he did. Strabo mentions that Ariarathes (father, son, or the same guy) conquered Kataonia and integrated it with Cappadocia, but Sinope was in the other direction. We do know that he did not give obeisance to Alexander, and after his death Perdikkas and Eumenes defeated Ariarathes in two battles and impaled him.
In terms of what we know about Sinope itself, we do know from Arrian that Alexander intercepted envoys from Sinope to Darius, and he released them because he felt it reasonable for such an embassy to occur. The envoys from Greek cities to Darius, however, he killed.
Therefore, based on this, I believe it’s reasonable to state that Abdasan reigned just before Ariarathes. Further, based on the fact that Ariarathes minted the same type as Abdasan (sadly the plates are too poor to tell if they share obverse dies) and also minted other types, suggests that Ariarathes took Sinope from Abdasan.
The above I feel is fairly safe, but going on a limb, I wonder whether either Alexander or his satrap of northern Phrygia Kalas placed Abdasan in charge of Sinope, and he was summarily removed by Ariarathes. Certainly, his coinage is rare, which suggests it wasn’t minted for long. Either Alexander or Kalas would have wanted to control such a rich city, and perhaps Abdasan was unpopular, which caused the populace to invite Ariarathes to rule.
Of course, nothing in the literature supports that, so it’s just a guess. Since we don’t know when Ariarathes took control over Sinope, we can’t say for sure that Abdasan’s reign overlapped with Alexander‘s invasion.