103, Lot: 98. Estimate $2000. Sold for $1808. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

GREEK KINGS of BAKTRIA. Diodotos I, in the name of Antiochos II of Syria. Circa 255-235 BC. AV Stater (20mm, 8.33 gm). Mint A (near Ai Khanoum). Attic standard. Diademed head of Diodotos I right / Zeus advancing left, holding thunderbolt and aegis, eagle at his feet; N in left field. SC 629; cf. Holt Series A, Group 7 (tetradrachm); Kritt -; Bopearachchi -; SNG ANS -. EF, test cut.

From a hoard of about 70 coins found in India in 2001. For background in the circumstances surrounding the hoard, see O. Bopearachchi and K. Grigo, "Thundering Zeus revisited," in ONS Newsletter 169 (Autumn 2001).

The variety of Diodotos I gold stater with the N control was previously known only from a cast forgery in the BM, although the control was known for tetradrachms. It was thus excluded in the catalogs by Holt (Thundering Zeus) and Kritt (Dynastic Transitions in the Coinage of Bactria). The many new examples from the hoard now firmly establish the validity of this variety, and it has been published as SC 629. 

Implications for the current model of Diodotid coinages will follow from unpublished varieties from the hoard in due course. Holt had proposed a theory to explain the numerous test cuts on these coins (cf. Dynastic Transitions, p. 14), relating them to a weight reduction from 8.6 gm to circa 8.3 gm during the reign of Diodotos II at the time of the invasion of Euthydemos. With numerous uncut Diodotos I staters from the hoard at the lower weight this theory must now be discarded. The near uniform placement of the test cuts does suggest some official act, however.

The presence of such a major hoard of Bactrian gold in India strongly supports substantial contacts between the Seleukid colonists and that area, and likely also the presence of an Indian component of the Seleukid colony at Aï Khanoum, as developed in Dynastic Transitions (cf. pp. 67-68 and 177-178). 

Modified excerpt taken from Triton VII. Written by Brian Kritt.