cation of the coin on which it is engraved to Artemis. I an indebted to the kindness of Mr. Newton for references which may serve to explain how this might take place. Firstly, coins were frequently thrown into wells, in order to gratify the deities to whom they were sacred. "Near the Amphiaraïon was a spring called the Fountain of Amphiaraos. This was not employed for sacrificial uses, nor for lustrations, but when any person had been relieved from disease by consulting the oracle he threw into the spring gold and silver coins." 11 And, secondly, it seems, from an inscription published by Boeckh, that pieces of money were sometimes fastened with other offerings on the walls of temples. This remarkable monument enumerates, among other dilapidations in the Temple of Amphiaraus, the falling of coins and ornaments from the memorial tablets on the wall. On this Boeckh 12 remarks: "Igitur hæc numismata et alia argentea et aurea ornamenta affixa erant donariis quæ ad parietem collocata erant; hæc vero numismata et ornamenta deciderant, soluta ligatura sive ferrumine." Lucian, 18 again, speaks of votive coins affixed to the statue of a divinity : νομίσματα ἔνια ἀργυρᾶ πρὸς τὸν μηρὸν κηρῷ κεκολλημένα. And Mr. Newton 14 found traces of this custom in Asia Minor in the shape of Turkish gold coins affixed to the images and pictures of saints with wax. It is intrinsically probable that the offerer of a coin might engrave upon it words

13

"Pausan., i. 34, quoted by Mr. Newton in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Literature, 2nd series, vol. v., p. 147. Hordes of coins, as, for instance, the Vicarello find, have been discovered in wells.

12

Boeckh, C. I., i. p. 747.

13 Lucian, Philopseudes, c. 20.

14

Travels and Discoveries in the Levant," vol. i. p. 87, and vol. ii. p. 5.

denoting his desire or his gratitude; but I find no positive proof that such was the custom, with the exception of the coin before us, which may perhaps be unique. There is, however, in the British Museum a tablet 15 recording the offerings made to the Temple of Artemis Brauronia, and among these we find mention made of an åμñéxovov, or shawl, inscribed with the words 'Apréμidos iepòv. If such phrases were written or embroidered on garments, we need be very little surprised to find them punctured on coins. 16

4. Copper coin of a ruler of Characene.

Obr.-Head like that of a Parthian king, left (Kamnaskires ?), diademed and with ear-ring; behind, anchor, inverted and surmounted by star.

Rev.-HPAKAHC, and some uncertain letters, enclosing a bearded head, diademed, to left.

Size 7. (Plate VII., No. 6.)

I am induced to publish this coin, although it belongs. to a class already treated of by Mr. Vaux in the Numismatic Chronicle,17 because it is remarkable in some respects, and has not been separately published or engraved. The head on the obverse, from its likeness to that of Kamnaskires, even down to minute details of dress, must be concluded to be either his or that of an immediate successor. The legend of the reverse I might

15 Published by Boeckh, C. I., vol. i. p. 246, and destined, we may hope, to reappear in still more correct form, in the Corpus of British Museum inscriptions.

16 The intentional defacing of coins in the case of their being offered to the divinities of springs or rivers was an obvious preservative against their being again appropriated by the profane to the purposes of ordinary commerce. In the river Seine, near Paris, numerous Gaulish coins of gold have been found, all of them defaced in the same manner by a cut from a chisel across the head on the obverse. There can be but little doubt of these coins having been votive offerings to the divinity of the river.—J. E. 17 Vol. xviii. p. 140.

have supposed to be merely a barbarous rendering of his name, had not the accurate and experienced eye of M. de Sauley, in lighting on it, at once detected the name of HPAKAHΣ, and certainly all the letters of that name can be discovered by a careful observation. Mathematicians know how many chances there are to one that a random collection of letters will fail to produce an intelligible word; and therefore we are justified in assuming that the engraver meant to produce the name Herakles, 18 and that Herakles was a real person. Accepting fully Mr. Vaux's theory that Kamnaskires reigned in or near Characene, we must attribute the present coin also to that region, and the only question that remains is whether this Herakles was the successor or the satrap of Kamnaskires. He may have been a Greek soldier of fortune, for these abounded in the East after the time of Alexander; and the smaller head on the reverse of the coin may perhaps be intended for a portrait of him.

I publish this coin with much diffidence, and chiefly with the view of directing the notice of collectors and keepers of museums to a class of coins which has not received such attention as it deserves. There are a number of coins in appearance like the present, and, like it, bearing the anchor of the Seleucidæ in a prominent place in the field. Of these some bear a head like that of Kamnaskires, some a late Parthian or early Sassanian head, full-face, and a well-defined inscription in Pehlvi characters. If some one well acquainted with the Pehlvi letters and the antiquities of Susiana would but study these, the results to numismatic science might be excellent. PERCY GARDNER.

18 The name Herakles was very rare in Greece, but may have been less so in the East. We know that it was bestowed on the son of Alexander and Barsine.

XII.

COINS OF ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS IN THE EAST.

(Conclusion.)

BY MAJOR-GENERAL A. CUNNINGHAM.

ON THE MONETARY SYSTEM OF THE GREEKS OF BACTRIANA, ARIANA, AND INDIA.

THE coinage of the Eastern Greeks, which I have attempted to describe in the foregoing pages, presents several very important deviations from the systems followed by their countrymen in Europe and Western Asia, which I now propose to examine in some detail. The weights of the various coins from Diodotus to Hermæus show that the Eastern Greeks followed the monetary system of Athens, which had been already adopted by Alexander the Great and his immediate successors. To this system the Greek kings of Bactriana steadily adhered; but the Greek kings of India, from the very first, departed from the Attic system in the mass of their copper money, as shown in the coins of Pantaleon and Agathokles, which are of the same weight, and of the same square shape, as the previously existing Indian money. They also reproduce the same type of

'It is a curious fact that the first two Mughal Emperors of India, Báber and Humayun, adhered to the style of coinage of

the maneless Indian lion on the reverse, and even exhibit the same peculiarities of fabric in the deeply indented small square die of one side, and the loss of one or more corners, by the adjustment of the original square or oblong blank piece of metal to the required weight. A few copper coins of Agathokles also show the adoption of the sacred Bodhi tree surrounded by a Buddhist railing, and of the Indian symbol, which is usually called a Chaitya, but which I believe to be a conventional representation of Mount Meru. The square form thus introduced by the first kings was continued down to the close of the Greek rule under Hermæus, when it disappears suddenly with the advent of the Indo-Scythian princes.

Another novelty was the introduction of a nickel coinage by the Indo-Grecian kings Pantaleon and Agathokles, which was copied by Euthydemus. The use of nickel is confined to the money of these three princes -by previous writers these nickel coins had always been described as silver; but when I began to write the present account of these Eastern Greek coins I was led to examine them more carefully, and as I felt satisfied that they were not silver, I placed them in the hands of my friend Dr. Walter Flight, of the British Museum, who kindly undertook to make a quantitative analysis of a coin of Euthydemus. The result was most unexpected, as it revealed the fact that these coins owe their whiteness entirely to the presence of nickel, which amounts to as much as 20 per cent., while the mass of the metal, or upwards of 77 per cent., is pure copper, the remainder being composed of small quantities of cobalt, iron, tin,

their own country; but their successors adopted the Indian system of coinage, which was in general use, and which they found it impossible to suppress.