Notae Numismaticae - Zapiski Numizmatyczne (2.1997)

TOM II_

KRAKÓW 1997

NOTAK MMISMATICAR
ZAPISKI MMIZMATYCZÜ

STANISŁAW KALITA

Institute of History, Jagiellonian University

Cracow

PORTRAITS OF RULERS
ON GRECO-BACTRIAN AND INDO-GREEK
COINS. AN ATTEMPT AT CLASSIFICATION

In the mid-third century BC, on the eastern frontiers of the Seleucid
kingdom, in Bactria and Sogdiana, a new state was built which came to be
known in history as the kingdom of the Greco-Bactrians. Its first ruler was
Diodotus (250-230 BC), former governor of that territory on behalf of
Antiochus II. He was the first of the numerous group of monarchs whose
domains extended beyond Bactria and - from the early second century -
south of the Hindu Kush in today’s Pakistan and even northern India. In
the Indus river basin, the rule of Greek kings lasted longer than in Bactria
itself. Coins with their names still appeared in the first century BC, while
to the north of the Hindu Kush, central Asian nomads held sway.

Very little is known about the history of the Bactrian Greeks. No com-
prehensive historiographic sources have survived to answer the most cru-
cial questions facing students of Hellenistic history in central Asia and
India. Archeological knowledge of today’s Afghanistan, where Bactrian

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