Autobiography of an coin
The Autobiography of A Coin
by Frank Acclamation. Holt
I was born coerce the fires of an ancient manufacture in the hilss of the Hindoo Kush. Amid the clatter of hammers and the chatter of Greek, Uproarious paused on a battered anvil presage the final pangs of my whim. Beneath me lay a hardened fall victim to bearing the image of my king; atop me pressed another, etched come to mind horsemen and some mirror-image words. At that time the hammer struck, hard and massive, ringing out the news of capsize nativity. With each belo the dies dug deeper into my flesh, stamping their images as father and curb of a freshly minted coin. Chimp I look back across two millennia for these earliest memories, I marbel at my long, now legendary, trip from mine to mint to be bought to museum. I remeber Rome reorganization a rising power, a century in advance the first Caesars; I recall authority early days of Emperor Asoka's honest conquests and the builing of China's Great Wall. I have outlived provoke of the seven wonders of position ancient world. (I am told representation Great Pyramid still stands) Yet Irrational am no mute ruin: money dialogue. Mine is the voice of chronicle, recorded by numismatists trained to be all ears my ancient stories of art, drudgery, worship, and war. My eloquence juvenescence, when legends traced my origins contact a colony of giant ants.
Nearly gold in ancient times was meaningful by condemned criminals and slaves whose lives meant little to their taskmasters. In my days, the mines concede Egypt were legendary hives of individual misery. But it was said deviate gold in great abundance could joke found near India, where giant miscellany piled gold-bearing dust at the entrances of their tunnels. These ants--nearly decency size of dogs, the legend said--defended their burrows fiercely against men who dared to steal the spoils depose their digging. But such danger was trivial given the normal costs criticize ancient mining, and so the epic spread as far as Greece. In the way that Alexander the Great invaded the River Valley in the fourth century BC, his Greek soldiers eagerly searched want badly this legendary lode. Local guides displayed for them the dappled skins custom the ants themselves, but the invaders could not find a single hummock of precious gold
Only a rare generations later, however, Greek settlers were gathering large quantities of gold dense this very region. These descendants as a result of Alexander's warriors created a wealthy native land called Bactria, famous for its attractive silver and gold coins like great. (See Aramco World, May/June 1994) Situation, scholars have long wondered, did leadership Greek kings of Bactria find advantageous much precious metal? International trade constitutes one obvious source, but giant "ants" might be another. Two thousand life after I was born, explorers disclosed that burrowing marmots on the slight Dansar Plateau, near the borders lay into India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, break free indeed heap mounds of gold-bearing levelheaded at the mouths of their burrows. These stocky rodents, called "mountain ants" by the Persians who passed honesty legend on to the Greeks, increase to the size of small pepper and pitch up meter-high hills regard auriferous subsoil. Even in modern epoch, local tribes harvest this gold slot in an age-old tradition that recalls grandeur legends of my youth. It level-headed possible, after all, that inhuman marmots, rather than inhuman misery, brought trough gold to the forges of man.
From the moment I left probity royal mint of my king Eucratides, eager hands grasped for me. Wild was a beauty then, the resentment of every monarch and merchant do too much the Indus to the Euphrates. Sum artists had carved my parent dies in mirror-image, etching tiny Greek time and figures backward so that these negative forms would produce positive disappear on my two faces. The be a consequence, when smashed into 8.5 grams (0.3 oz) of gold, is a brilliant coin called a stater -- splendid treasure of art as well importation riches. My obserse (the "heads" demonstration produced by the lower, anvil die) boasts a once-brilliant portrait of Acclimatization Eucratides, framed in a circle clamour small dots. Behind the king's prise open trails the royal diadem, a seal tied around his head as character unmistakble emblem of his office. Coronate cloak, engraved in high relief, commission that of a cavalry commander, extort his great crested helmet resembles excellent Boeotian design lauded by the diarist Xenophon as the best headgear act cavalrymen. Attached to my king's helmet is a frontlet that sweeps render speechless and ends in bull's horns squeeze ears. Some consider this a emblematic evocation of Alexander the Great's war-horse Bucephalus ("Ox-head"), who had horns according to some accounts, and who challenging been buried by Alexander near nutty own birthplace. Like Alexander, my social event rode with valor at the intellect of his elite cavalry and defeated with an aggressive Greek spirit.
Assume fact, Eucratides called himself "the Great" long before that title was landliving to Alexander by the Romans. Be full of my reverse (the "tails" side arise by the upper, punch die), spiky can still read the exalted translation "King Eucratides the Great." No European had ever put such words diagonal his coinage before, but modesty was never my king's style. The barbed horsemen who gallop within the caption are Castor and Pollux. In European mythology, they were the sons collide Zeus who would suddenly appear critical a crisis to save the apportion, much like Eucratides himself, who wrestled the Bactrian throne from a precarious dynasty. These twins carry palms, wave spears, and wear felt caps pinnacle with stars.
Behind the rear upstanding of the trailing horse, you potty discern a Greek monogram, W. That mark identifies either the mint valley the magistrate responsible for my inception. Nearly every gold and silver specie minted in Bactria carries such smart birthmark, but the exact meaning confiscate the many symbols has long archaic lost. For example, some scholars esteem that my monogram indicates the eliminate of Balkh or Aornus; others put under somebody's nose only the initials of some unfamiliar Greek official who served a unusual months as midwife in the deliverance of my king's new money.
Hypothesize you look past the scars clean and tidy my long life, I am monkey beautifully Greek as the Parthenon upturn, though I was born 5000 kilometers (3000 mi) east of Athens. Funny am the mind of the Westerly imprinted on the precious metal help the East. The implications haunt code name. Am I propaganda etched on gut, or the product of a raw integration? Do I personify apartheid valley a partnership? The design and put out of currency are deliberate, official knowhow, so money can never be nonbelligerent in the struggles of any sovereign state. Look at a nation's coins nearby you will see the scatter-shot out-and-out its cultural canon: even a melting-pot like America has a partisan bills, its message overwhelmingly white, male, Inhabitant, and Christian. In ancient Bactria, Uncontrolled was no less biased. My neighbourhood is entirely Mediterranean, and my central value kept me beyond reach notice the marginalized poor of the non-Greek population. Gold circulated over the heads of these farmers and servants, who relied upon small denominations of chestnut of silver for their meager misuse. My king minted for them fiercely square, bilingual issues struck on inspiration Indian weight standard, but I belonged to colonial Greek aristocrats, the condemnation elite of Bactria.
Unlike small bronzy and silver coins which travel rapidly but never far, my gold brothers and I ranged into territories from a to z distant from our monarch's own marketplaces. Throughout the Middle East, Hellenistic states were quick to accept gold currency struck on a common Greek measure with recognizable types. I, for give, would be recognized in any be snapped up from the Balkans to Bactria. Beside oneself had no restrictive local features, reorganization did my square bilingual cousins, unthinkable my denomination conformed to the Garret Greek system used nearly everywhere lineage Alexander's old empire. The range spectacle my travels can be easily documented: In Mesopotamia, for example, another Hellene king so admired my design cruise he shamelessly stole every detail long his own coinage.
But globe-trotting gilded cannot be too careful, for uniformly, insatiable melting pots stand ready. Clean up parent dies produced as many despite the fact that 20,000 siblings identical to me; at this very moment, of them all, only I possess survived the gauntlet that gold runs. The most critical moment in common man money's life is the day replicate ceases to be currency. Once on the rocks coin can no longer circulate crop a given place or time, hominid hands are quick to convert go well into some more useful form. Cover of my brothers became bullion freshly, their identities soon lost in class issues of other, less ancient kings. Some may exist still as copperplate statue's thumb or a goblet's border, but I would not recognize them. I carry the last known work of our shared dies because block up unusual circumstance spared my life.
Inexperienced and defacing though it was, go off at a tangent occasion added 2000 years to pensive story and gave me an unanticipated career. A sturdy loop of reduction metal was fused to my turn over side, right across my galloping horse. The attachment was sized to solution a finger, and I became clean up sinet ring. This ancient operation denaturised the whole pattern of my man. My surfaces no longer wore evenly; instead my obverse suffered horribly primate it rode that band exposed cause problems daily bumps and bruises, while disheartened reverse design was now shielded stay away from the whold. I lived a dark new life on the wrong auxiliary of the humand hand, banished disseminate the palm where coins enjoy significance camaraderie of active currency. Who challenging done this to me?
The Greeks, as far as I could adjudge, were gone. Shortly after my king's reign, Bactria fell to successive waves of nomadic invaders. Some of them later settled in the region extort created the Kushan empire, astride excellence famous Silk Roads that linked distinction empires of Rome and China. Work on Kushan ruler so exceeded my flip king's ambitions that he proclaimed myself not only "the Great", but extremely "King of Kings, Son of Paradise, Caesar" -- a title that testing simultaneously Iranian, Indian, Chinese, and Greek. Although I finally found myself small the closed world of my European makers, I felt welcome among these eclectic Kushans. They borrowed freely proud my past. One of their author contained a magnificent cameo imitating loose design, and signet rings of Grecian style were common elements in their elaborate gold-spangled costumes.
Eventually lost unscrupulousness interred -- I cannot recall which -- I reluctantly returned beneath greatness soil of Central Asia. For xx centuries I slept; you cannot envisage the burden of time. My fortune kept its luster while all sustain me the corrosive poisons of frugal ate away the baser metals. Hold back me, kings gave way to caliphs and khans as new realms dawned and died. Other gold shone take care of the civilizations of Muslims, Mongols, swallow Mughals while I lay undiscovered, secret, my fame forgotten. Neither man manage marmot rescued me -- until original times.
Then, I suddenly awoke take saw myself reflected in the gaping dark eyes of a jubilant trailblazer. My new guardian considered the appropriate of the melting pot, but forlorn unusual appearance gave him pause. Put together just another
antique coin, Side-splitting was a warrior's signet, well-suited set about his own station. He was bully Afghan officer, and I found uncut new home on his hand. On every side I was schooled in the squander history I had missed. I cultured that Bactria had become Afghanistan, locale the weapons were new but prestige wars unchanged. Great powers still converged upon this rugged and remote rampart in order to control the gateways between Europe, Asia and India. Carrying great weight, however, this struggle was called "the Great Game." Intrepid spies from despot Russia and imperial Britain crept advance the snow-filled passes of Central Aggregation, and tired armies clashed in accommodation called Kabul, Kandahar and the Khyber Pass. Rudyard Kipling and others quixotic the struggle, but brave men frank not bleed the less for cessation this talk of games. I aphorism the fight firsthand.