Posted: February 13th, 2022

My Early Memories about Coins

I used to be born within the fires of an historical forge within the hilss of the Hindu Kush. Amid the clatter of hammers and the chatter of Greek, I paused on a battered anvil for the ultimate pangs of my creation. Beneath me lay a hardened die bearing the picture of my king; atop me pressed one other, etched with horsemen and a few mirror-image phrases. Then the hammer struck, laborious and heavy, ringing out the information of my nativity. With every belo the dies dug deeper into my flesh, stamping their photographs as father and mom of a freshly minted coin.
As I look again throughout two millennia for these earliest recollections, I marbel at my lengthy, now legendary, journey from mine to mint to market to museum. I remeber Rome as a rising energy, a century earlier than the primary Caesars; I recall the early days of Emperor Asoka’s ethical conquests and the builing of China’s Nice Wall. I’ve outlived six of the seven wonders of the traditional world. (I’m instructed the Nice Pyramid nonetheless stands) But I’m no mute damage: cash talks. Mine is the voice of historical past, recorded by numismatists skilled to listen to my historical tales of artwork, trade, worship, and struggle.
My eloquence youth, when legends traced my origins to a colony of big ants. Most gold in historical occasions was mined by condemned criminals and slaves whose lives meant little to their taskmasters. In my days, the mines of Egypt had been legendary hives of human distress. But it surely was stated that gold in nice abundance could possibly be discovered close to India, the place big ants piled gold-bearing mud on the entrances of their tunnels. These ants–nearly the dimensions of canines, the legend said–defended their burrows fiercely towards males who dared to steal the spoils of their digging.

However such hazard was trivial given the traditional prices of historical mining, and so the legend unfold so far as Greece. When Alexander the Nice invaded the Indus Valley within the fourth century BC, his Greek troopers eagerly looked for this legendary lode. Native guides displayed for them the dappled skins of the ants themselves, however the invaders couldn’t discover a single mound of treasured gold Just a few generations later, nevertheless, Greek settlers had been gathering giant portions of gold on this very area.
These descendants of Alexander’s warriors created a rich kingdom referred to as Bactria, well-known for its stunning silver and gold cash like me. (See Aramco World, Could/June 1994) The place, students have lengthy puzzled, did the Greek kings of Bactria discover a lot treasured metallic? Worldwide commerce constitutes one apparent supply, however big “ants” could be one other. Two thousand years after I used to be born, explorers found that burrowing marmots on the distant Dansar Plateau, close to the borders of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, do certainly heap mounds of gold-bearing earth on the mouths of their burrows.
These stocky rodents, referred to as “mountain ants” by the Persians who handed the legend on to the Greeks, develop to the dimensions of small canines and pitch up meter-high hills of auriferous subsoil. Even in fashionable occasions, native tribes harvest this gold in an age-old custom that recollects the legends of my youth. It’s doable, in spite of everything, that inhuman marmots, moderately than inhuman distress, introduced my gold to the forges of man. From the second I left the royal mint of my king Eucratides, keen arms grasped for me. I used to be a magnificence then, the envy of each monarch and service provider from the Indus to the Euphrates.
Nice artists had carved my mum or dad dies in mirror-image, etching tiny Greek phrases and figures backward in order that these adverse varieties would produce constructive impressions on my two faces. The end result, when smashed into eight. 5 grams (zero. three oz) of gold, is a splendid coin referred to as a stater — a treasure of artwork in addition to riches. My obserse (the “heads” face produced by the decrease, anvil die) boasts a once-brilliant portrait of King Eucratides, framed in a circle of small dots. Behind the king’s neck trails the royal diadem, a ribbon tied round his head because the unmistakble emblem of his workplace.
His cloak, engraved in excessive aid, is that of a cavalry commander, and his nice crested helmet resembles a Boeotian design lauded by the historian Xenophon as the most effective headgear for cavalrymen. Hooked up to my king’s helmet is a frontlet that sweeps again and ends in bull’s horns and ears. Some contemplate this a symbolic evocation of Alexander the Nice’s war-horse Bucephalus (“Ox-head”), who had horns in keeping with some accounts, and who had been buried by Alexander close to my very own birthplace. Like Alexander, my king rode with valor on the head of his elite cavalry and conquered with an aggressive Greek spirit.
In truth, Eucratides referred to as himself “the Nice” lengthy earlier than that title was given to Alexander by the Romans. On my reverse (the “tails” facet produced by the higher, punch die), you possibly can nonetheless learn the exalted caption “King Eucratides the Nice. ” No Greek had ever put such phrases on his coinage earlier than, however modesty was by no means my king’s model. The armed horsemen who gallop throughout the inscription are Castor and Pollux. In Greek mythology, they had been the sons of Zeus who would out of the blue seem in a disaster to save lots of the day, very similar to Eucratides himself, who wrestled the Bactrian throne from a faltering dynasty.
These twins carry palms, brandish spears, and put on felt caps topped with stars. Behind the rear legs of the trailing horse, you possibly can discern a Greek monogram, W. This mark identifies both the mint or the Justice of the Peace liable for my creation. Practically each gold and silver coin minted in Bactria carries such a birthmark, however the precise which means of the numerous symbols has lengthy been misplaced. For instance, some students suppose that my monogram signifies the town of Balkh or Aornus; others see solely the initials of some unknown Greek official who served a number of months as midwife within the supply of my king’s new cash.
When you look previous the scars of my lengthy life, I’m as superbly Greek because the Parthenon itself, although I used to be born 5000 kilometers (3000 mi) east of Athens. I’m the thoughts of the West printed on the treasured metallic of the East. The implications hang-out me. Am I propaganda etched on plunder, or the product of a peaceable integration? Do I personify apartheid or a partnership? The design and distribution of forex are deliberate, official acts, so cash can by no means be impartial within the struggles of any society.
Have a look at a nation’s cash and you will notice the scatter-shot of its cultural canon: even a melting-pot like America has a partisan coinage, its message overwhelmingly white, male, European, and Christian. In historical Bactria, I used to be no much less biased. My milieu is solely Mediterranean, and my intrinsic worth stored me past attain of the marginalized poor of the non-Greek inhabitants. Gold circulated over the heads of those farmers and servants, who relied upon small denominations of bronze of silver for his or her meager purchases.
My king minted for them some sq., bilingual points struck on an Indian weight normal, however I belonged to colonial Greek aristocrats, the ruling elite of Bactria. Not like small bronze and silver cash which journey swiftly however by no means far, my gold brothers and I ranged into territories fairly distant from our monarch’s personal marketplaces. All through the Center East, Hellenistic states had been fast to simply accept gold cash struck on a typical Greek normal with recognizable sorts. I, for instance, can be acknowledged in any market from the Balkans to Bactria.
I had no restrictive native options, as did my sq. bilingual cousins, and my denomination conformed to the Attic Greek system used practically all over the place in Alexander’s outdated empire. The vary of my travels may be simply documented: In Mesopotamia, for instance, one other Greek king so admired my design that he shamelessly stole each element for his personal coinage. However globe-trotting gold can’t be too cautious, for all over the place, insatiable melting pots stand prepared. My mum or dad dies produced as many as 20,000 siblings an identical to me; now, of all of them, solely I’ve survived the gauntlet that gold runs.
Probably the most important second in any cash’s life is the day it ceases to be forex. As soon as a coin can now not flow into in a given place or time, human arms are fast to transform it into some extra helpful type. Most of my brothers turned bullion once more, their identities quickly misplaced within the problems with different, much less historical kings. Some could exist nonetheless as a statue’s thumb or a goblet’s lip, however I’d not acknowledge them. I carry the final recognized imprint of our shared dies as a result of an uncommon circumstance spared my life. Painful and defacing although it was, that event added 2000 years to my story and gave me an sudden profession.
A sturdy loop of my metallic was fused to my reverse facet, proper throughout my galloping horsemen. The attachment was sized to suit a finger, and I turned a sinet ring. This historical operation modified the entire sample of my life. My surfaces now not wore evenly; as an alternative my obverse suffered horribly because it rode that band uncovered to every day bumps and bruises, whereas my reverse design was now shielded from the whold. I lived a wierd new life on the fallacious facet of the humand hand, banished from the palm the place cash benefit from the camaraderie of energetic forex. Who had finished this to me?
The Greeks, so far as I might decide, had been gone. Shortly after my king’s reign, Bactria fell to successive waves of nomadic invaders. A few of them later settled within the area and created the Kushan empire, astride the well-known Silk Roads that linked the empires of Rome and China. One Kushan ruler so exceeded my very own king’s ambitions that he proclaimed himself not solely “the Nice”, but in addition “King of Kings, Son of Heaven, Caesar” — a title that’s concurrently Iranian, Indian, Chinese language, and Roman. Though I lastly discovered myself outdoors the closed world of my Greek makers, I felt welcome amongst these eclectic Kushans.
They borrowed freely from my previous. One in all their graves contained an impressive cameo imitating my design, and signet rings of Greek model had been widespread parts of their elaborate gold-pgled costumes. Finally misplaced or interred — I can’t recall which — I reluctantly returned beneath the soil of Central Asia. For twenty centuries I slept; you can’t think about the burden of time. My gold stored its luster whereas throughout me the corrosive poisons of earth ate away the baser metals. Above me, kings gave method to caliphs and khans as new realms dawned and died.
Different gold shone for the civilizations of Muslims, Mongols, and Mughals whereas I lay undiscovered, underground, my fame forgotten. Neither man or marmot rescued me — till fashionable occasions. Then, I out of the blue awoke and noticed myself mirrored within the extensive darkish eyes of a jubilant discoverer. My new guardian thought of the expedient of the melting pot, however my uncommon look gave him pause. Not simply one other vintage coin, I used to be a warrior’s signet, well-suited to his personal station. He was an Afghan officer, and I discovered a brand new residence on his hand. There I used to be schooled within the lengthy historical past I had missed.
I realized that Bactria had turn out to be Afghanistan, the place the weapons had been new however the wars unchanged. Nice powers nonetheless converged upon this rugged and distant bastion in an effort to management the gateways between Europe, Asia and India. Now, nevertheless, this battle was referred to as “the Nice Sport. ” Intrepid spies from czarist Russia and imperial Britain crept alongside the snow-filled passes of Central Asia, and drained armies clashed in locations referred to as Kabul, Kandahar and the Khyber Go. Rudyard Kipling and others romanticized the battle, however courageous males didn’t bleed the much less for all this discuss of video games. I noticed the battle firsthand

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