A very fine example of the kashmir Smast elephant globe coin.

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by Muhammad Niazi, Sep 9, 2024.

  1. Muhammad Niazi

    Muhammad Niazi Well-Known Member

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    https://www.instagram.com/p/C8MG7AAM7II/?img_index=1

    The Kashmir smast caves are a huge and ancient cave network in Pakistan which was an autonomous region minting its own coins with designs inspired from the empires surrounding it. Mostly having Alchon hunnish, islamic, kushan and hindu shahi iconography. The region has probably the most diverse types of coinage in the subcontinent or anywhere.
    This is probably one of the finest kashmir smast types due to the quality of the elephant, as usually other smast coins tend to be very abstract and difficult to look at.

    There are 5 brahmi aksharas above the elephant, I am currently learning how to read Brahmi legends, any help in the legend above will be appreciated!

    the reverse depicts a poppy flower? alchon gourd? or a pomegranate? but definitely some kind of fruit.
    The globe can also be a type of asian gourd:

    [​IMG]
    Which looks in reality like this:
    gourd.PNG

    Dr. Waleed Ziad has done a lot of work on kashmir smast coins (I dont have access to his new book, so I am unsure if he has included it there with further details), here is an old reference of his ONS paper to this coin: JONS 187
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    An example of the coin from Zeno:

    https://www.zeno.ru/showphoto.php?photo=26467 (interesting discussion in comments)

    Let me know what you think
     
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  3. Alegandron

    Alegandron "ΤΩΙ ΚΡΑΤΙΣΤΩΙ..." ΜΕΓΑΣ ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ, June 323 BCE

    Very cool!
     
    Muhammad Niazi likes this.
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