A Depiction of the Tomb of Cyrus the Great on an Antiochus I Bronze of Susa

133650000.

Kritt, Brian. Essays on Coins of the Seleucid East [Classical Numismatic Studies No. 15]. Lancaster, PA, and London, 2023. Hardbound with dust jacket. 94 total pages and 27 plates. (GR 365).

From the author's synopsis:

"This new book presents essays on topics related to coins of various types in the Seleucid east.

Here are the basic contents of the essays, by chapter:

1. New imitative coinages from Sogdiana, copying Seleucid coins from Bactria, particularly those which copy Greek names and monograms.

2. Identification of the crude “Crab/bee” bronzes from Samarqand as Scythian burial Tokens.

3. New finds of coins supporting the theory of directed transmission of Aï Khanoum bronzes to Samarqand.

4. A challenge to the interpretation of an Antiochus III Aï Khanoum bronze found in Ustrushana as supporting the presence of forces of Antiochus near Samarqand.

5. A new Diodotus I bronze coinage of Aï Khanoum, with “Diodotus” inscription, matching that of some Diodotus I gold staters from the Vaisali hoard.

6. A hoard of Antiochus III bronzes, closely co-ordinated with the movements of his forces on his eastern anabasis.

7. The presence on an Antiochus I bronze coin of Susa of a small, intentionally inconspicuous representation of the Tomb of Cyrus the Great, presumably placed there by a local Persian die cutter at the mint of Susa. This Persian partisan added a traditional feature to the image: the rows of pairs of horns of divinity, which had been current at Susa for buildings, at least since the fourth millennium BC, and for millennia afterwards. This defiant act took place about twenty years after the Persid revolt from the Seleucids in the south, which led to Persid control of Pasargadae, and the Cyrus Tomb. This scenario is supported by an earlier example of a Susa die cutter, who secreted, inside a monogram on a Seleucus I tetradrachm, an image of the horns of a Persid fire temple, accompanied by an Aramaic letter."

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