A while ago I posted a bit about a story @bozz sent me about a large site of very old Japanese coins that had been found. Read about it here.

Today I want to look at a similar story sent to me by @trumpman. This one is really neat. It's about a 2000-year old coin stash being found in Pakistan. Many of the coins here are even older than the Japan site I posted above! None of them are silver, gold, or any other precious metal, but I thought this might be of some interest to the coin collecters in this group.

Check this out:

They are so old they've corroded into one lump.

They are thought to date from the Kushan Empire, the Indian empire of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which had conquered the Greek empire in the area established by Alexander the Great (the Seleucid Empire, ruled by Seleucus I Nicator, who was one of Alexander's generals).

My knowledge of this period is not nearly as much as my Japanese history knowledge, but I do have some trivia about a link. It was during Alexander the Great's empire that the Greek demigod Heracles moved into the Buddhist Pantheon as Vajrapani, and in the Kushan Empire period he continued to move east where he eventually ended up in Japan as Nio, a big muscle-bound giant that often guards Buddhist temples in pairs.

So the next time you see a Japanese temple guarded by this big guy, you'll know that's really the Japanese version of Heracles.

Anyway, back to the coins...

The fused lump weighs about 12 lbs (5.5 kg) and is thought to contain between 1000 and 1500 coins.

The article doesn't mention if they will try to separate the coins or leave them as is.

There seems to be a figure on one of them, which researchers think is probably a Kushan king.

The old coins remind me a bit of this coin I have.

My uncle gave this to me many years ago on one of my trips to the States. He claimed it was a Roman coin that he picked up from some dealer. He is a collector and dealer of old things, primarily things from the American civil war, but occasionally other, so I never doubted his claim and have always kept the coin, even though it looks more like a lump of stone now.

At any rate, another cool coin find, and a slight link to Japan with our buddy Heracles/Nio up there, so that's pretty cool too.

Here's the full story. I found several other sites with more info about the find. Here's one with some additional photos.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.