velarfricative

On 8/24/2022 at 11:17 AM, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

Everybody has coins of Menander, but what about the other Indo-Greeks?

I'd like to learn more about them.  What rulers are the most common?  I'd like to find the cooler rulers, the ones with the helmets or hats.

Also, what is a good catch-all search phrase if I want to find the maximum Indo-Greek Drachm hits in vcoins?

I fished out a very decrepit and porous reduced standard Indo-Greek Tetradrachm from an HJB junk box. I hope to ID it someday.  I'd have to dig it up, an dmore importantly, improve my photography skills.  I  believe it's a helmeted bust.

It's been many years since I bought the coin; who was the later Indo-Greek ruler who made joint coins with Calliope? I bought an HJB example, way back when.  He had a bag full of them.  At the time, I could only afford the chipped one.

There were around 30 different Indo-Greek rulers, but all but the most dedicated collectors will be unlikely to own coins from more than a dozen of them or so. You're most likely to run into Antimachos II, Apollodotos I, Menander I, Strato I, Zoilos I, Lysias, Antialkidas, Heliokles II, Philoxenos, Archebios, Hermaios, Apollodotos II, and Zoilos II.

A couple of my own coins from a rarer king: Archebios.

ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΥ ΝΙΚΗΦΟΡΟΥ ΑΡΧΕΒΙΟΥ /  (maharajasa dhramikasa jayadharasa arkhebiyasa) 𐨨𐨱𐨪𐨗𐨯 𐨢𐨿𐨪𐨨𐨁𐨐𐨯 𐨗𐨩𐨢𐨪𐨯 𐨀𐨪𐨿𐨑𐨦𐨁𐨩𐨯

On 8/24/2022 at 6:38 PM, quant.geek said:

and here are two coins with the legends that I did a while ago. See if you can follow the Unicode Kharosthi letters with the legend on the coin...

Indo-Scythian: Azes I (ca. 58-12 BCE) AR Drachm (Hoover 640; MACW 737a; Senior 76)

Obv: ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΝ ΜΕΓ ΑΛΟΥ ΑΖΟΥ; Diademed Zeus standing left holding scepter and making benediction gesture
Rev: 𐨨𐨺𐨱𐨪𐨗𐨮 𐨪𐨗𐨪𐨗𐨮 𐨨𐨱𐨺𐨟𐨮 𐨀𐨩𐨮; Nike standing right holding wreath and filleted palm branch. Monogram of Taxila to right

 

Indo-Scythian: Azilizes (ca. 85-45/35 BCE) AR Tetradrachm (Senior 50.1T)

Obv: BAΣIΛEΩΣ BAΣIΛEΩN MEΓAΛOY AZIΛIΣOY; King on horseback right, holding spear
Rev: 𐨨𐨺𐨱𐨪𐨗𐨮 𐨪𐨗𐨪𐨗𐨮 𐨨𐨱𐨺𐨟𐨮 𐨀𐨩𐨁𐨬𐨁𐨖𐨮 (Majarajasa rajarajasa mahatasa Ayalishasa); Athena standing left, holding shield with aegis and thunderbolt; monograms in fields

Close; the Kharosthi for the first should be 𐨨𐨱𐨪𐨗𐨯 𐨪𐨗𐨪𐨗𐨯 𐨨𐨱𐨟𐨯 𐨀𐨩𐨯 and for the second should be 𐨨𐨱𐨪𐨗𐨯 𐨪𐨗𐨪𐨗𐨯 𐨨𐨱𐨟𐨯 𐨀𐨩𐨁𐨫𐨁𐨮𐨯

On 8/24/2022 at 1:12 PM, Broucheion said:

Hi @Nerosmyfavorite68,

Here is my only Indo-Greek coin. I know nothing of this series so I've taken the references from Acsearch.com from similar coins. If anyone can correct or augment the atribution I would appreciate it.

 

INDO-GREEK BACTRIA - HERMAIOS, TAXILA, BACTRIA (PUNJAB, PAKISTAN), 90-70 BCE
Ar Drachm
Size: 16x17 mm
Weight: 1.5 g
Die Axis: 11:00

Obv: Hermaios diademed and draped bust facing right. Legend (starting 7:00 clockwise): BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΣΩTHΡOΣ. Legend (starting at 7:00 - counter clockwise): EΡMAIOΥ. Plain border.
Rev: Zeus seated on throne facing left, holding Nike in his right hand and scepter cradled in his left arm. To left, forepart of elephant to right; legend in karoshti around. Kharoshthi Legend: Maharajasa tratarasa Heramayasa (Of the Great King Hermaios the Savior). Plain border.
Refs: Mitchener 420aa; Boperachi 366, 97 pg 57 etc.
Seller: TAMCO (Georges Tambakopoulos) of Sweeden

 

I got the coin because of it's connection to a poem of C.P. Cavafy. If you're not familiar with his poems, they have been translated here. Here frequently references Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic themes. Being Greek and a numismatist, I find his work doubly appealing. I also have a very tenuous connection (a la 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon) in that an uncle of mine knew him in Alexandria. Here's the poem I had in mind (also posted at CT a while ago). That coin is not mine.

 

 

 

- Broucheion

Your coin is actually an Indo-Scythian issue imitating Hermaios' coinage; later ones such as this have some quite unusual portraits.

On 8/7/2022 at 1:23 PM, Curtis JJ said:

I don't have many (possibly only the following one), but I find many of the Kushan coins interesting for their bilingual legends. (That's a topic that fascinates me, how the coins show the collision of cultures; bilingual ones appear in particular kinds of contexts beginning, I think, in the Hellenistic period and continuing through to medieval Islamic and European coinage, among other places.) 

This particular Soter Megas / Vima Takto type, though, uses only Greek (plus a Tamgha). But his coins are right at the boundary between Greek & Kushan traditions. His later coins were bilingual, using Greek and, if I understand correctly, Prakrit written in Kharoshthi script on the reverses.

 

It's also interesting that his identity only came to light with the discovery of the Rabatak inscription [wiki], a sort of Rosetta Stone for the Kushan world, “…an inscription written on a rock in the Bactrian language and the Greek script, which was found in 1993 at the site of Rabatak, near Surkh Kotal in Afghanistan.”

From CNG's listing for a different example: "The legend reads only Soter Megas - the Great Savior, and the actual name of the issuing king long remained unknown. The discovery of the Rabatak inscription, though, changed Kushan history by providing evidence to verify the elusive identity of 'Soter Megas'. His name was Vima Tak[to] (the last syllable is still uncertain).”

See also: Razieh Taasob 2008, “Language and Legend in Early Kushan Coinage: Progression and Transformation.” 

(I pulled the trigger on this one because it was from the Clain-Stefanelli Collection [formed c. 1930s-1990s; Vladimir: 1914-1982; Elivra: 1914-2001; and Alexander: 1943-2015], in which I have a particular interest.)

Very nice Vima Takto! It was not Vima Takto, but his son, Vima Kadphises, who used Greek and Kharosthi on his main issues. Vima Takto had subsidiary mints that did make use of Kharosthi and Greek, however. Following the Vimas, all Kushan coins are monolingual, first in Greek and then in Bactrian for the remainder of their empire.

Tangentially, since hopefully this thread has visibility, here is a dangerous forgery I would like to kill: a die-struck forgery of Vima Kadphises made with transfer dies. Attached is also an example of where the dies of the mother coin cut off. Sold at many auction houses; not Roma, though! Good job keeping it out.

9 minutes ago, Richard Beale said:

To be fair, this is indeed a straight up clone! The planchet shape, centring etc are all the same. But now we're into Hunnic tribes. We'll contact that buyer.

 

Hunnic tribes are a worthy area to get into; I don't mean to be prickly about Baktrian coins, and Roma is generally quite good (I saw some very nice Hunnic coins in the last sale, in fact, that were quite fantastic). It just gets frustrating seeing a lack of attention in the area (not necessarily referring to you, just among numismatists in general). By and large Roma does a fine job, certainly far above the average for how Baktrian is handled.

20 minutes ago, Severus Alexander said:

@velarfricative, please be a bit more circumspect about your claims unless you have very good evidence.  There are lots of examples of Hunnic coins struck with rusty dies, so the match you point to here is far from definitive.

I appreciate the snide remarks, but I don't think I will. My only hope is to make sure that forgeries can be kept out of Baktria; the current state of the field is such that widely-known forgeries are in recent, modern catalogs. If you'd care to be a little more careful in reading the discussion, I was the one who pointed out the difficulty of weeding out Baktrian forgeries.

https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=4679&lot=421  All I'll say is, I do feel quite bad for whoever bought this one!

7 minutes ago, Richard Beale said:

Assuming for a moment that the 5 Yuezhi coins are fake, which is certainly possible I admit, but not yet demonstrated, I don't think anyone could consider 0.3% of Baktrian coins sold "a lot". On the matter of the Pantaleon we'll have to disagree - the appearance, fabric, corrosion patterns and break were such that it did not raise the warning flags that an unbroken, uncorroded example might, so an ancient imitation seemed more likely. It turned out to indeed be a modern concoction of course and the coin was not sold.

On the topic of die matches, there is also these: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?term=imitating+Eagle+series&category=1-2&company=93&lot=&thesaurus=1&images=1&en=1&de=1&fr=1&it=1&es=1&ot=1&currency=gbp&order=1 . Attached is a very close example for the Zeus/Eagle one, which to me seems certainly cast. As for the other Athena/Eagle drachms, the style to me seems quite off, and completely unlike any other imitations that I have seen though I would be happy to see a counter-example.

Just now, Richard Beale said:

I have never had reason to doubt the type - handling 5 isolated coins spread out over the space of 3 years is not something that naturally arouses one's suspicions, though I agree it is concerning that they all seem to share the same dies. I also don't like the fabric or appearance of the earlier 2 in particular.

That said, I'd still like to see more evidence to back up your assertion that "Roma certainly sells a lot of fake Baktrian coins". These are 5 lots out of 1590.

Well, I'm not accusing you of deliberately flooding the market with fakes, of course; you handle a huge volume of coins, and on a frequent basis, and it's not exactly possible to look over everything with a fine-tooth comb. I mean "a lot" in a relative sense, the vast majority of your Baktrian coins are certainly authentic, but I have noticed a tendency to attribute coins as imitations when it seems more likely that they are inauthentic. https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=5591&lot=482 in recent memory; forgeries of this style from Pantaleon show up often on ebay (https://www.ebay.com/itm/133984804705?hash=item1f321ddf61 appears to be die-identical ).

15 minutes ago, Richard Beale said:

Except that we don't. Perhaps you'd like to point out some of the "lot of fake Baktrian coins" that we "certainly sell"?

Ah, I see it got withdrawn; https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=5902&lot=632  is a very common fake; common enough to show up 2 e-sales previous where it was also withdrawn https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=5803&lot=638. I would like to hear your thoughts on this type, however: https://www.sixbid-coin-archive.com/#/en/search?text=yuezhi dynasts

Roma certainly sells a lot of fake Baktrian coins, but I don't really see any issues with #600; what were people's suspicions?

Since we're talking about Leu, I finally managed to get this nice Antimachos I elephant bronze. Ex-Triton and at a very reasonable price compared to the usual Leu hammers.

Now, here we have one of my personal favorites: an issue of Hormizd II, from the Gandhara mint. For reference, it's ANS Kushan 2341 and Cribb 36. This is a small little coin, weighing only 2.98g; the weight standards for this mint gradually reduced from about 6g to less than 1g over the course of the Kushano-Sassanian period. Now, I know it's a lot to take in, it's quite the spectacular coin of course; to summarize, the obverse depicts the bust of the king facing right, in his signature winged crown with a lotus bud feature above. In front of the bust is a name in Bactrian, ΜΗΖΗ; some speculate it to be the name of a mint official, but I find that questionable considering the long period of time in which coins were minted featuring that name. The reverse is a gracefully rendered fire altar, standard for the mint. Hormizd II's reign was a short one, and his coins are exceedingly rare; no examples of this type were in the Donum Burns collection, and the ANS has only one example. His other bronzes are only slightly more common, and only 3 examples are known of his dinars; however, this is obviously the more interesting type, given how everyone prefers bronze over gold. It is thought that he would go on to become Sassanian king, under the same name, as they both share the same crown; this is only speculation, however.

Very late post-Kidarite Electrum dinar, issued by Yashovarman. I don't think I've seen any explanations of this type anywhere, so I'll give one briefly; the figure in the center of the obverse is a heavily abstract human; to the left, his arm has been turned into a set of 8 dots, with a letter in Brahmi below. To the right is the word "Kidara" in Brahmi. On the reverse is an extremely abstract version of Ardoxsho; to the right is the first half of the king's name (written from top to bottom), and in the lower-left corner of the coin the name continues.

34 minutes ago, Ryro said:

Y'all are killing me with these amazing coins in an area I am just scratching the surface of and some barbarous imitations:

Only one of yours looks imitative, actually; the fifth one appears to be a small unit Huvishka imitation. The others are all official issues from their respective regions.

32 minutes ago, Severus Alexander said:

What a fabulous array of Kanishka reverses, @velarfricative!  All great coins, though of course the Buddha is extra special.

I have an Oado:

 

Also this smaller denomination, a "drachm" (17mm and 4.22g) that I've tentatively ID'd as Mao and coming from an alternate mint in Kashmir.  Does that sound right to you?

 

Going to some other emperors, here's Kujula Kadphises with Hercules on the reverse:

 

And Vima Takto with himself(?) on the reverse:

 

Vima Kadphises with Shiva:

 

And finally, Huvishka with Mithra (either a late phase coin or an imitation... again, any help here much appreciated!)

 

 

Very nice examples! You are correct that your drachm depicts Mao, the shoulder crescents are unique to that deity. Your Huvishka looks likely imitative, with a blundered tamgha and legends; but, that being said, many of his later issues have blundered legends as well, so it's hard to say for sure. Huvishka's coinage is vast and complex, and the conditions of the coins make it tough to study.

I just noticed that this forum needs some Kushan coins, I'll help with that. I'll show off some (but not all) of the deities on Kanishka I's coinage. All coins feature the obverse of Kanishka standing at an altar, holding a spear and sacrificing; the reverse always has a Tamgha in the field, a symbol of uncertain meaning that changed with each ruler.

First up is Mioro, sun god, radiate and making a blessing gesture; named as Helios on the earliest coins.

Next is Athsho, god of fire and metals, holding a diadem; on some later coins he is depicted with tongs. On the dinars from his early reign, this god is identified as Hephaistos.

Mao, the lunar deity; depicted with a sword and crescents on his shoulders. Identified as Selene on the earliest coins.

Nana, holding an animal protome; spelled NANAIA in Greek. Frequently depicted on Kushan coins, and of Iranian origin.

Oesho, an extremely syncretic deity, holding a trident, a water pot, a diadem, and a thunderbolt; the attributes he holds vary widely in number and type. Evidence exists that he was identified as Herakles on the earliest Greek issues, though here he is clearly identified with Shiva.

Oado, god of winds, holding a billowing cloak; famous for disseminating along the silk road all the way to Japan. On the earliest coins, he is identified as Anemos.

Finally, and most famously, the seated Buddha. Strictly speaking this is not the historical Buddha, who is depicted on other tets and is properly called Sakyamuni (SAKAMANO in Baktrian); this is Maitreya (ΜΗΤΡΑΓΟ in Baktrian), an eschatological Buddha who has yet to come. Two separate Buddhas are depicted on Kanishka's coinage, and not just one; Sakyamuni is by far the most common.

There are 2 other gods missing here; Ardoxsho and Pharro. Both are exceedingly rare, and I have yet to get my own examples, but they can be found in museum collections.

And there you have it, a small slice of Kanishka's bronze output; I'm only touching the surface here, there's plenty of other more esoteric bronze issues of his worth discussion, but for the time being I'll leave it at that.

An early and a late issue of Rajuvula; he issued a few lead types too, but these small drachms were his main issues.

Umayyad dirham minted in AH120. The mint is al-Bab, modern day Derbent, Dagestan, making this probably my only coin minted in modern-day Russia.

On 6/16/2022 at 12:12 PM, Finn235 said:

Nice one! 😉

I still have these two

One thing that I don't think is discussed enough is the extreme variance in style in his drachms - for basically any other ruler, the Degenerate style is assumed to be a later imitation, but I haven't seen this for Apollodotus II. I would hazard a guess that even after his death the later Indo Greeks and Indo Scythians continued to strike his coins, which is why his coins seem to be more common than all other Indo Greeks combined, even including Menander and Hermaios.

There are actually other rulers with finer and weaker styles; see the styles of the Antialkidas drachms here. In fact, for most rulers with more than ephemeral reigns there are slightly poorer style examples; it's just more pronounced with Apollodotos II because his coins are so common and he seems to have had some particularly bad mints. The reason that his coins aren't considered imitations is simple enough; the style of his poorer types is the one that was continued for every succeeding ruler, with his finer-style drachms being the last portraits that look particularly human. I haven't gotten any myself yet, but those would be Dionysios, Zoilos II, Strato II, Strato III, Apollophanes, and to a certain extent Hippostratos.

On 6/17/2022 at 2:45 AM, Topcat7 said:

Here is one of Menander:

155-130 BC. INDO-GREEK - MENANDER - KINGS POTRATE 

 

and 80-65 BC Apollodotos II Indo-Greek-Conquests of Alexander the Great

 

Both of your drachms are issues of Apollodotos II; the first one is simply a finer-style example.

Apollodotos II Drachm; this is what they look like in a higher grade.

5 hours ago, ominus1 said:

..i have an imitative Meander...but it doesnt look like that one altho that doesn't mean the OP isn't.

 

Indo-Greek Meander imitative, 40BC 15mm 1.60gms

"Meander" is not a king, it's Menander... at any rate, this is a posthumous issue struck in the name of the long-dead Indo-Greek king Hermaios struck by the Indo-Scythians.