Faces on coins

[edyzmedieval]

This really intrigues me. From where the hell did you get pics with coins that represent the leader? From the middle of the earth?

I think only maximum 500 people knew about Yuezhi before EB, and especially their leader!!!

So, tell me, please.

[VandalCarthage]

Various people just found them and posted them up. A lot are very easy to find on sites like wikipedia or just a simple google image search.

[Greek_fire19]

Yep, heres a whole bunch of indo parthian coins:

http://www.grifterrec.com/coins/indo...oparthian.html

And here's a few different Yuezhi coins:

http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/Agesiles.html

http://explanation-guide.info/meaning/Sapadbizes.html

Hope that helps

[QwertyMIDX]

I have a numistics research job at the moment, so I've actually been touching 2000 year old coins on a regular basis, most of them are in awful shape though.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Frank Holt's books have made me a lot more interested in it. I took a graduate level numismatics class with William Biers once, but Holt's books on Baktrian coinage and that of Alexander are well written and provide so much info on Baktria (that we don't get anywhere else - numismatics is *the* best source for our knowledge of information on Baktria).

[edyzmedieval]

Must be an interesting job, Qwerty.

I am interested in Ptolemaic and Seleukid coins.
Plus, we have a bounty hunt in Romania as well, for "chosons", which are gold coins from the reign of Choson, a tribal king, long before Burebista. They are worth a fortune, and so far, hundreds of coins have been found.

[Mithradates]

I have a fall of constantinople but chose to read persian fire by tom holland before what is fall of constantinople like sorry for being off topic but just interested?

[edyzmedieval]

Can you edit the post and put a little punctuation please?

[Proper Gander]

i have fall of constantinople, but chose to read persian fire by tom holland before. what is fall of constantinople like? sorry for being off topic, just interested.

[edyzmedieval]

Oh. Depends. The book you have or my book, which I am still writing on?

[QwertyMIDX]

Tom Holland is a hack...

It's an ok job, a lot of the coins are pretty much just copper blobs, but there are some cool ones. One is a decadrachm from Athens, freaking massive.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

How can you not get excited reading stuff like this:

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu....of.a.coin.htm

and

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu...r.and.gold.htm
"At 63 millimeters in diameter (2½ inches) and more than 169 grams (six ounces) of Bactrian gold, it is the largest such coin ever minted in the ancient world,"

Now *that*'s a big coin!

[edyzmedieval]

Tom Holland is a hack...

It's an ok job, a lot of the coins are pretty much just copper blobs, but there are some cool ones. One is a decadrachm from Athens, freaking massive.

You call that an ok job? Be serious. It's so cool.

[VandalCarthage]

How can you not get excited reading stuff like this:

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu....of.a.coin.htm

and

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu...r.and.gold.htm
"At 63 millimeters in diameter (2½ inches) and more than 169 grams (six ounces) of Bactrian gold, it is the largest such coin ever minted in the ancient world,"

It's fascinating, and there's so much material on it. RC Senior, R MacDonald, AN Lahiri, Prof. Dani, Tarn, Mitchner, Narain, Holt, etc. Narain has even presented essays suggesting that Ganesha was first depicted on the coins of Antialkidas. Senior and MacDonald's "Decline of the Indo-Greeks" is really one of the best books I've ever read on the subject, and the "The Coinage of Hermaios and it's Scythian Imitations" is awesome. In the former, he makes the first major attempt to put Indo-Scythian and Indo-Greek relations in perspective, thanks to a coin of Artemidoros claiming Maues as his father, and a potential joint issue of Apollodotos II and Azes.

Bactrian and Indo-Greek numismatics really is just outrageously interesting. If you can read the material, and places the kings, you can pretty much make legitimate arguments for a whole lot of different situations at the time. It's the most fun a student of Hellenism with a good imagination could ever have with his hobby

Guess I'm babbling, hehe. But when coins are 95% of the research material on your favorite subject... ~

[Geoffrey S]

Tom Holland is a hack...

Heck yeah. Didn't learn anything from Persian Fire I couldn't have read in Herodotus' stuff, just more popular packaging. Not to mention his tiring comparisons of ancient empires with the USA and a fight against "terrorist states".

[QwertyMIDX]

Yeah, his east v. west Huntington shit annoys me.

Anyway, it's not that numistics isn't really cool, it's that the coins I'm working with are mostly in terrible condtion and there's nothing you can say about them. I'll post some pictures of them at somepoint and you can see what I'm talking about. The one's that are in good shape are really cool, but I have to catalog all of them before I can do anything interesting with the ones that are in good enough shape to even guess where they're from. I don't have any info on where they were found either, they're just from a few dead white men's personal collections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[edyzmedieval]

I love the ancient coins. They look so cool.

Can you post some coins from the Ptolemies and Seleukids?

[QwertyMIDX]

I will if I find any, there is one coolish one with the Vergina star on it.

[paullus]

Yeah, we have a similarly uncatalogued collection at Duke. There're some really interesting coins--a good sized Bactrian one included--but many are little better than bits of slag. And the museum curators insist on putting up some roman coins for their exhibit, when they have several nicer ones from the East, and when the display is predominantly of Greek artifacts! Oh well.

[Mithradates]

I think i started an argument or atleast a general concensus apologies for grammer but i get enough of that in English!!

[abou]

How can you not get excited reading stuff like this:

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu....of.a.coin.htm

and

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issu...r.and.gold.htm
"At 63 millimeters in diameter (2½ inches) and more than 169 grams (six ounces) of Bactrian gold, it is the largest such coin ever minted in the ancient world,"

Now *that*'s a big coin!

My parents actually get the Aramco World magazine and I asked my mother if we had that issue. It was a long shot since it is over a decade old, but it really is a nice publication so I thought there was a chance. Turns out that we did! My parents brought the magazine to me when my sister's high school band played at my university and I got to read it. The pictures are great and augment the article immensely, which is great on in its own right..

[edyzmedieval]

What's the Aramco magazine? Numismatics?

[abou]

Aramco Magazine or Saudi Aramco World is a publication that was begun by the Saudi Aramco oil company. It is published every two months and features articles on the Middle East.

Now that I am older I may go back and start reading the issues that my family has hoarded. Who knows what could be waiting to be read in the stacks of paper.